Donald Trump’s election victory triggered several reactions not only from the United States but all over the world. Many were shocked, eventually worried. An egotistical businessman with no prior government experience has been voted as the 45th U.S. President. Before he could even be inaugurated, Trump is enveloped with controversies concerning his campaign promises and policies.
Among the most critical is his Mexican-American wall proposal. Trump envisions a border that will physically separate the two nations to keep the immigrants out of his country. Not that they suggest to push through the building of the divisive structure, Mexican designers, among others, have imagined what the wall would be like.
Estudio 3.14, a design firm based in Guadalajara, produced architectural renderings based on their interpretation of Trump’s pronouncements. In collaboration with the Mamertine Corporation from the U.S., they developed visuals, rendered by Agustín I Ávalos, that depict the various border landscapes including hills, desert, a border crossing over a river, and in urban Tijuana.
In a statement, the studio says, “Based on Trump’s statements, the economic, ecological and financial aspects have been called into question.
“However, he continues with his verbal plan. As architects and designers, we have the capacity to imagine and interpret what Trump is saying, and we are convinced that if we can make people see it, they can assess his words and the perversity in his proposal.”
Part of the design firm’s imagination is to get the wall to be a prison as well – this is in consonance of Trump’s position in apprehending 11 million undocumented immigrants.
The Mexican-designed prison-wall is continuous, spanning at 1,954 miles or 3,145 kilometers. It runs uninterrupted from the Pacific coast to the Gulf of Mexico. The structure has units for security, administration, health areas, and textile factories, which allows it to be self-sustaining. Six million personnel could be employed in the prison-wall.
U.S. citizens could go up the structure and take a nice look on the other side. They can do this if all they want, or when they get bored with the shopping center that can be built along the prison-wall’s width.
Finalizing the design is not just made randomly. Estudio 3.14 explains that apart from Trump’s description, the prison-wall takes inspiration from Luis Barragán, a Pritzker Prize-winning Mexican architect.
“Given that Mr. Trump wants a very beautiful wall, we turned to the work of the most famous Mexican architect in the world — Luis Barragán — that with the beauty of his walls, he attained the Pritzker prize and reinvented Mexican architecture.”
It is painted pink, “because the wall has to be beautiful”, the studio tells. They added, “… it has been inspired in by Luis Barragán’s pink walls that are emblematic of Mexico. It also takes advantage of the tradition in architecture of megalomaniac wall building”.
Sources: Dezeen | Design Boom
