Borderwall as public space / Teddy Cruz -- Ronald Rael -- Pilgrims at the wall / Marcello Di Cintio -- Borderwall as architecture / Ronald rael -- Transborderisms / Norma Iglesias-Prieto -- Recuerdos / Ronald Rael -- Why walls don't work / Michael Dear -- Afterwards / Ronald Rael

"The ground we walk on and grow crops in also just happens to be the most widely used building material on the planet. Civilizations throughout time have used it to create stable warm low-impact structures. The world's first skyscrapers were built of mud brick. Paul Revere Chairman Mao and Ronald Reagan all lived in earth houses at various points in their lives and several of the buildings housing Donald Judd's priceless collection at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa Texas are made of mud brick." "While the vast legacy of traditional and vernacular earthen construction has been widely discussed, little attention has been paid to the contemporary tradition of earth architecture. Author Ronald Rael founder of Eartharchitecture.org provides a history of building with earth in the modern era focusing particularly on projects constructed in the last few decades that use rammed earth mud brick compressed earth cob and several other interesting techniques. Earth Architecture presents a selection of more than 40 projects that exemplify new creative uses of the oldest building material on the planet."--BOOK JACKET.

An esteemed journalist delivers a compelling on-the-ground account of the construction of President Trump’s border wall in San Diego—and the impact on the lives of local residents. In August of 2019, Donald Trump finished building his border wall—at least a portion of it. In San Diego, the Army Corps of engineers completed two years of construction on a 14-mile steel beamed barrier that extends eighteen-feet high and cost a staggering $147 million. As one border patrol agent told reporters visiting the site, “It was funded and approved and it was built under his administration. It is Trump’s wall.” 14 Miles is a definitive account of all the dramatic construction, showing readers what it feels like to stand on both sides of the border looking up at the imposing and controversial barrier. After the Department of Homeland Security announced an open call for wall prototypes in 2017, DW Gibson, an award-winning journalist and Southern California native, began visiting the construction site and watching as the prototype samples were erected. Gibson spent those two years closely observing the work and interviewing local residents to understand how it was impacting them. These include April McKee, a border patrol agent leading a recruiting program that trains teenagers to work as agents; Jeff Schwilk, a retired Marine who organizes pro-wall rallies as head of the group San Diegans for Secure Borders; Roque De La Fuente, an eccentric millionaire developer who uses the construction as a promotional opportunity; and Civile Ephedouard, a Haitian refugee who spent two years migrating through Central America to the United States and anxiously awaits the results of his asylum case. Fascinating, propulsive, and incredibly timely, 14 Miles is an important work that explains not only how the wall has reshaped our landscape and countless lives but also how its shadow looms over our very identity as a nation.

Why Walls Won't Work is a sweeping account of life along the United States-Mexico border zone, tracing the border's history of cultural interaction since the earliest Mesoamerican times to the present day. As soon as Mexicans, American settlers, and indigenous peoples came into contact along the Rio Grande in the mid-nineteenth century, new forms of interaction and affiliation evolved. By the late-twentieth century, the border states were among the fastest-growing regions in both countries. But as Michael Dear warns, this vibrant zone of economic, cultural and social connectivity is today threatened by highly restrictive American immigration and security policies as well as violence along the border. The U.S. border-industrial complex and the emerging Mexican narco-state are undermining the very existence of the "third nation" occupying the space between Mexico and the U.S. Through a series of evocative portraits of contemporary border communities, Dear reveals how the promise and potential of this "in-between" nation still endures and is worth protecting. Now with a new chapter updating this story and suggesting what should be done about the challenges confronting the cross-border zone, Why Walls Won't Work represents a major intellectual intervention into one of the most hotly-contested political issues of our era.

What if we stopped dividing the US and Mexico, and instead saw the border as one region? This book envisions the cultural and industrial cohesion of the area At a moment when migration has returned as a hot-button political issue and NAFTA is being renegotiated as the USMC, political discourse has exaggerated differences on either side of the shared US/Mexico border. But what if we stopped dividing the United States and Mexico into two separate nations, and instead studied their shared histories, cultures and economies, acknowledging them as parts of a single region? In 2018, under the direction of Mexican architect Tatiana Bilbao, 13 architecture studios and their students across the United States and Mexico undertook the monumental task of attempting to rethink the US/Mexico border as a complex and dynamic, but also cohesive and integrated, region. Two Sides of the Borderenvisions the borderlands through five themes: creative industries and local production, migration, housing and cities, territorial economies and tourism. Building on a long shared history in the region, the projects in this volume use design and architecture to address social, political and ecological concerns along our shared border. Featuring essays, student projects, interviews, special research and a large photo project by Iwan Baan, Two Sides of the Borderexplores the distinct qualities which characterize this place. The book uses the tools of architecture, research and photography to articulate an alternate reality within a contested region. Participating architectural programs and projects include Cornell University College of Architecture and Art, Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Texas Tech University College of Architecture in El Paso, University of Texas at Austin, Universidad Iberoamericana, Universidad de Monterey UDEM, University of Michigan, University of Washington Department of Architecture, University of California, Berkeley, University of Cincinnati College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning, and Yale School of Architecture.

30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, we live in a time of globalization and free trade. Nevertheless, 70 new border walls have been built in this period - put together, they would cover the total circumference of the Earth. While governments offer manifold justifications for building these separation barriers, they invariably attract the attention of artists. Is it merely the lure of transgression, however, that attracts them - or is there a deeper significance in the artistic encounter with border walls? And which artistic strategies do these artists employ to approach them? In order to address these questions, Élisa Ganivet revisits the history of border wall aesthetics and compares more recent border-related works by 100 artists, including Joseph Beuys (Berlin), Banksy (Israel-Palestine), and Frida Kahlo (Mexico-US). Through art and thus beyond art, we understand the flaws and shortcomings of supposedly well-oiled systems. With a preface by Élisabeth Vallet.