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Posts Tagged ‘Binational’

Picnic at the Border: Artist JR Hosts Bi-National Meal at a Giant Table

12 Oct

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]


At one small point on the United States-Mexico border, where two towns named Tecate are separated by a fence, residents of both countries sat down to the same picnic at a gigantic table printed with ‘The Eyes of the Dreamer.’ This new event, held on October 8th, comes just weeks after the artist rolled out a massive 65-foot-tall photographic installation of a toddler peering over the fence from the Mexico side.

“GIANT PICNIC at the border today in Tecate … people eating the same food, sharing the same water, enjoying the same music (half of the band on each side) around the eye of a dreamer … we forgot the wall for a minute …” says JR in a Facebook post.

Picnic-goers sat down to the same meal at one big table for the single-day installation, which was apparently pulled off with the help of a sympathetic border guard. A band played, with some of its members sitting on the U.S. side and others on the Mexico side.

JR is well known for these black-and-white photographic installations, which are put up all over the world, often without official permission. The subjects of his portraits are usually everyday people who live in the area. The TED Prize winner says he aims to use art to “turn the world inside out.”

Colorful Contrast: Geometric Street Paintings in France

A broad stripe of bright paint in a zig-zag pattern contrasts with muted, understated urban surroundings in the latest urban art installation by artist duo Sabina Lang and Daniel Baumann. Working …

Tiny Row House Installation Restores Missing Addresses

Taking a stroll along Westerstraat in Amsterdam, you might notice that an entire clump of houses seems to have disappeared. The addresses jump from 54 to 70, with nothing but a four-inch crack …

Abandoned Architecture as Art: 13 Radical Reclamation Projects

When an abandoned structure can’t be rehabbed in the traditional sense, whether due to practical constraints or simply becoming obsolete, it can be transformed for another purpose with paint, …

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[ By SA Rogers in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

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Binational Megacity: Master Plan Designed to Span US-Mexico Border

18 Sep

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

border city plan

Border City is being designed as a bridge between nations, a novel approach to creating international unity at a time when some politicians call for building walls. Proposed by architect Fernando Romero of the firm FR-EE at the London Design Biennale, this visionary project is to be developed along a region of border covering parts of Texas, New Mexico and Chihuahua.

futuristic border city

The plan is centered around an extant border crossing and aligned with other crossings in the area as well. It may sound far-fetched, but Romero is already negotiating with private land owners in the region as well as developers and investors. He hopes to make the city a reality within a decade.

border city design

Romero believes our existing concept of borders is “primitive” and sees and urgent need to move past binary understandings of such divides. Already, many global centers of economic activity are centered not around cities but rather clusters of metropolitan areas, often along national borders.

border city map

“This is a long-term vision, a vision that is not about building walls but about thinking more ambitiously about the mutual relationship [between two countries] and about what borders really mean between countries” said the architect. It is also a reflection of current reality, where there already “exists a very strong mutual dependency of economies and trades.”

border city installation

The urban plan consists of interconnected hexagonal-shaped grids, each with their own center and linked to existing transportation corridors and border crossings. If his proposal is fully realized, the city could even become a special economic zone (see also: Hong Kong and Andorra) that would enjoy semi-independent governance.

border city room

Even without that kind of designation and semi-autonomy, however, there would still be big benefits to residents and businesses in terms of easy access between countries due to optimized transit and city planning. Many “twinned” border cities along the Rio Grande have already benefited from close ties despite extant borders, despite the lack of centralized and ground-up plans to optimize connectivity.

border city utopia

“What you’re seeing here is the first binational city to be designed from zero between the United States and Mexico,” said Romero. “This is one of the most active borders in the world in terms of commerce and traffic of goods but also in terms of human activity and employment.”

Rolling Out a Master Plan: Movable City Runs on Rails

Imagine a city in motion, where not a single building is anchored to the ground, with hotels, event halls and other structures all on rails and movable at will. That’s the vision behind ‘A …

Outcast Checkpoints: 8 Abandoned Border Crossings of Europe

Nearly two decades ago even short trips across Europe could involve multiple stations, guards, lines and stamps, but the open-border policies in effect today have transformed many of these …

Cities on Rails: Mobile Master Plan Turns Trains into Towns

Modular thinking is brilliant and infectious, expanding and spreading from industrial-revolution technologies to three-dimensional printing and beyond. But how big can modularity get? Imagine the …

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[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

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