El Paso Border Wall Teeter-Totter Wins International Award

A temporary installation on the border wall has won a major award. "It's a major award!" No, it wasn't a leg lamp. But the installation I'm talking about is a teeter-totter on the border wall between Ciudad Juarez and El Paso. 

The installation was put up back on July 28, 2019 by San Francisco based architects and educators Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello. Rael and Fratello said of the installation:

The seesaw demonstrates how those immediate relationships between people can create an environment where happiness and play are also important aspects of life on the border.

The idea for the teeter-totter dates all the way back to 2009. When talking about how the idea came about, the architects and educators said:

We arrived at the concept for a seesaw at the border in 2009, as well as many other concepts for interventions at the border wall, as a way to tell the stories of the humanistic, cultural, and environmental challenges the construction of the wall presented.

The award for the installation comes from The Design Museum in London. The award is the Beazley Design of the Year Award and there are multiple different categories which include:

• Overall winner
• Architecture
• Digital
• Fashion
• Graphics
• Product
• Transport
• People's Choice Winner

The teeter-totter won two of these categories: Transport and Overall Winner.

Rael added about the installation:

I think what the project did was show an entirely different narrative of what the border is from what was being portrayed by the news or by the leader of the regime,” Rael says. “Suddenly we saw a landscape with mothers, aunts, grandmothers, and children, all playing together in a space that everyone assumed was a no man’s land.