Project: Life on the Border
Type: Competition
Team: Allen Lai, Chris DeGuzman, Curtis Ho
Year: 2017
Location: US/ Mexico Border
Trump’s wall will be built 100 yards from the Mexican border. Deportation operations have been stepped up, leaving approximately 11 million former US residents on the other side, with some deportees having never been in Mexico. This flood of population will exacerbate the chronic issues of clean water, housing, living and often violent colonias (border slums) in the border area.
New Tenochtitlan is a kit of parts concept that makes small interventions, altering spaces between borders into refuge colonias for deportees to steady their feet. The walls become a haven for vulnerable people ; keeping extortionist cartels and deportation officers separated. In between the wall and the border of Mexico, we propose a Maquilladora (special US-Mexico economic zone) and a consolidation point for deportees and existing aid programmes. It is only fitting that our project on top of the Tijuana River draws its name from the ancient aztec capital as a second formation of wandering Mexican peoples.