Ronald Rael on Future Frontiers
On 15-February, Ronald Rael shared his work “Borderlands” in the second installment of the 2022 Spring Urbanism Lecture Series, co-hosted by the City Design & Development Program (CDD), SMArchS Urbanism Program, and Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism at MIT.
Ronald is the author of Borderwall as Architecture: A Manifesto for the U.S.-Mexico Boundary (University of California Press 2017), an illustrated biography and protest of the wall dividing the U.S. from Mexico. He is also the author of Earth Architecture (Princeton Architectural Press, 2008), a history of building with earth in the modern era to exemplify new, creative uses of the oldest building material on the planet.
Ronald presented a deep dive into the intersection between cultural memory, traditional building systems, and advanced manufacturing. His work explores the expanded borderlands, an amalgamation of language, culture, cuisine, and politics. These spaces necessitate a simultaneous hybridized approach to design and engagement with cultural and sociopolitical history. In his latest exploration, a series of earthen ovens along the U.S Mexico border wall, finds a subtle intersection between technology, immigration, and traditional building systems. The practice of making these ovens has transformed into an activist practice; the ovens are being built along the U.S Mexico border in migrant shelters. The ovens invite community building, storytelling and cultural exchange. Reflecting on the ovens, a nun, who runs one of the shelters says: “We are rebuilding a humanity, we’re rebuilding people emotionally and physically before they continue on their journey.”
By Joris Komen, Norman B. (1938) and Muriel Leventhal Fellow, Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism.
