Created by architects Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello in 2019 along the U.S.–Mexico border, Teeter-Totter Wall transformed the dividing fence into a playground.
Bright pink seesaws connected children and families on both sides, turning a symbol of separation into one of joy and empathy — a fleeting yet powerful reminder that balance and connection can exist even across the world’s hardest borders.
Curated by Land to Land
Border as Architecture
Source: Rael San Fratello Website
Created by architects Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello in 2019 along the U.S.–Mexico border, Teeter-Totter Wall transformed the dividing fence into a playground.
The trade and labor relationships between the U.S. and Mexico are in delicate balance. Mexicans throng to the U.S. to find work, but often long to live comfortably in their own country. U.S. industry and agriculture is dependant upon immigrant labor pools, yet the Department of Homeland Security, Border Patrol, and Immigration and Naturalization Services have made it increasingly difficult to attract foreign labor.
The Teeter Totter Wall demonstrates the delicate balances between the two nations.
“Bright pink seesaws connected children and families on both sides, turning a symbol of separation into one of joy and empathy”
Rael & San Fratello
Ronald Rael is a designer, activist, trained architect, author, and Eva Li Memorial Chair in Architecture at the University of California Berkeley.
His research interests connect indigenous and traditional material practices to contemporary technologies and issues and he is a design activist, author, and thought leader within the topics of additive manufacturing, borderwall studies, and earthen architecture.
Virginia San Fratello is an educator, designer and creative technologist.
She is the Chair of the Department of Design at San Jose State University in Silicon Valley and an International Interior Design Association (IIDA) Educator of the Year recipient. She is a design activist, author, and thought leader within the fields of additive manufacturing, architecture, interior and product design.
Beazley Designs of the Year, Design Museum 2021
Architecture studio Rael San Fratello has been researching the border that separates Mexico from the USA since 2009.
“they wanted to create a place where citizens across the border could connect”
Viewing the boundary as a site that severs relationships between the two countries, they wanted to create a place where citizens across the border could connect, so they designed three bright pink ‘teeter-totters’ (see-saws) to slot into gaps in the steel border wall.
One designer worked from Juárez in Mexico and another in El Paso, USA. For just under twenty minutes on 28 July 2019, residents of El Paso and the Anapra community in Mexico could, for the first time, unite through play. Designed by artists Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello with Colectivo Chopeke.
