Borderwall as Architecture Becomes Reality

Ronald Rael holds the Eva Li Memorial Chair in Architecture and a joint appointment in the Department of Architecture, in the College of Environmental Design, and the Department of Art Practice at University of California Berkeley. He is both a Bakar and Hellman Fellow, Director the Masters of Architecture program, and founded the printFARM Laboratory (print Facility for Architecture, Research and Materials). His teaching spans the curriculum, from graduate design thesis, undergraduate courses on Design & Activism, and he has twice directed the one year post-professional Master of Architecture program, Studio One. He is an applied architectural researcher, design activist, author, and thought leader in the fields of additive manufacturing and earthen architecture. In 2014 his creative practice, Rael San Fratello (with architect Virginia San Fratello), was named an Emerging Voice by The Architectural League of New York—one of the most coveted awards in North American architecture. In 2016 Rael San Fratello was also awarded the Digital Practice Award of Excellence by the The Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA). He 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 featured in a TED talk by Rael.