Abstract
Thresholds, boundaries, and borders define the edges of our everyday life. Borders of all scales, visible or invisible, establish relationships between the built environment and surrounding communities. They have a huge role to play in terms of how we identify ourselves, relate to one another, utilize resources, and form communities. This edge is a physical and symbolic embodiment of our choices and is a reliable indicator of how equity is distributed. Thus, borders help define spaces and relationships. Borders can also restrict the sharing of resources which leads to the manifestation of inequities, disparity, and tension among the residents of the nation. These dissimilarities existing at the borderland zone are largely not intrinsic but instead engendered by the presence of the boundary. If borders are instead viewed as a means of stitching disparate entities together, they have the potential to be flexible, permeable, and inclusive. Moreover, borderlands tend historically to be zones of cultural overlap and political instability where the national identities and loyalties of the people often become blurred’. In the world today, there are 70 border walls, and this number is increasing with the rise in the fear among people for the “other”. The problem arises due to the idea of meum et tuum, i.e., mine and yours as a result doing away with delineation of borders and their enforcement either by walls, fences, or security patrol. These conditions amplify the innate human desire to own and protect property and physical space which becomes impossible to fathom unless it is seen, thereby causing the spur in the construction of these elements globally. Walls can cut people off from sources of stability and happiness, and these peace lines have become both a source of fear and “a security blanket” to assuage it. The continued existence of brick walls and concrete barriers dividing back yards and streets perpetuates the fear of “the other”; i.e. it reinforces the persistent segregation. Surveillance also becomes part of the dystopian atmosphere that walls create since it leads to watch-towers popping up to keep a check on the immigrant activity at the edge. Therefore, a highly securitized and exclusive border only exacerbates existing relationships of exploitation and discrimination. Norma Iglesia Prieto, a trans-border scholar also highlights how walls between nations are the most eloquent material expression of the human inability to co-exist and negotiate. The grander the walls the greater is the inability to negotiate and resolve common problems. However, if fear and mistrust are the building blocks of these walls, they can be torn down literally and metaphorically with tools like inter-relationships, co-existence, and the humanization of the nations involved. When neighboring countries have similar wealth and political systems, their borders may be open and undefended. The idea is to re-visit the idea of the wall as a more humane and liberating environment, thereby allowing an increase in the level of interaction resulting in higher awareness and commitment to a common good. Like Robert Frost in his poem, Mending Walls writes – ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’ highlighting how crucial the role of the edge is as it is both a symbolic and literal fulcrum of the relationship between two countries. The vision of this paper is, therefore, to explore the potential of architecture to blur the edge by facilitating bi-national cooperation through the rejection of borders as fetishized objects. The way society is progressing today; people tend to identify themselves as global citizens first and thus, these geographical boundaries only lead to a sense of disconnect between the citizens
