The Role of Architecture in Overcoming Barriers: From Ronald Rael’s Teeter Totter over the US-Mexico Border to Lawrence Halprin’s Freeway Park Designed over the Seattle Freeway

Abstract

In the last few years, more border walls have appeared in Europe than those present during the Cold War. What is fundamentally wrong about these walls is how a simple line drawn on a map, able to change the perception of a territory and of its identity, does not follow any design principle. In places characterized by security infrastructure, such as borderwalls, the role of architecture is minimal and struggles to go beyond a surface level. The only possible contributions remain in terms of provocations as seen by the designs of architect Ronald Rael. The border walls are not the only contemporary built “walls” that form barriers with negative social implications. Expanding on the theme of infrastructure, differently from the previously mentioned type, connecting infrastructure, such as highways, freeways, parkways, is designed to unite two sides, two places. If this is true in one direction, in the other direction it is quite the opposite: two sides that used to be neighboring are now separated by a physical barrier, not just a line in the sand. Lawrence Halprin’s Freeway Park designed as a bridge over the Seattle Interstate, wishes to reconnect the neighborhood that had been divided by the construction of the motorway. This paper wishes to analyze the role that architecture projects by the two architects, Rael and Halprin played in stitching back together parts of cities, communities, even countries through stratified complexity and also a new definition of interaction.