The Total Wall | notorious

The building is structured as a central organization, whose programmatic core is the auditorium, and which, mediated by a circulatory bellows, deploys leisure and educational programs on the perimeter. The public programs of general access deploys in the outer ring of the ground floor, towards the Rodrigo Bueno neighborhood, the access, the bar and the library, with semi-covered areas extend the programs to the exterior.

The exhibition areas, both covered and semi-covered, are located towards the Ecological Reserve. Located in the center of the building, the auditorium has a permeable perimeter enclosure system that can be opened expanding its spatiality, extending its interior to the spaces of the entrance hall, the library and the exhibition hall. This modality enhances the use of the auditorium and makes a dynamic space that supports multiple uses even more flexible and expandable.

The building generates series of expansions both on the ground floor and on the top floor. The expansions are understood as extensions of the quality of the interior space in semi-covered and uncovered spaces. In the case of the library, the expansion is the connection with the bar, giving the possibility of the appearance of a hybrid space where the activities of both programs can be integrated.

The building is structured as a central organization, whose programmatic core is the auditorium, and which, mediated by a circulatory bellows, deploys leisure and educational programs on the perimeter. The public programs of general access deploys in the outer ring of the ground floor, towards the Rodrigo Bueno neighborhood, the access, the bar and the library, with semi-covered areas extend the programs to the exterior.

The exhibition areas, both covered and semi-covered, are located towards the Ecological Reserve. Located in the center of the building, the auditorium has a permeable perimeter enclosure system that can be opened expanding its spatiality, extending its interior to the spaces of the entrance hall, the library and the exhibition hall. This modality enhances the use of the auditorium and makes a dynamic space that supports multiple uses even more flexible and expandable.

The building generates series of expansions both on the ground floor and on the top floor. The expansions are understood as extensions of the quality of the interior space in semi-covered and uncovered spaces. In the case of the library, the expansion is the connection with the bar, giving the possibility of the appearance of a hybrid space where the activities of both programs can be integrated.

The Total Wall

The ultimate wall for the Mexico-US border

Date 2016

Location El Paso, Mexico

Type Competition

Program Border Wall

Project team Santiago Miret and Melisa Brieva

Since mankind has settled in a territory he has built walls. Some of them, the ancients, we don´t even know why they were erected. But all of them have significations associated. Some were meant to protect cities, others delimitated sacred places, others were symbols of power, other were strictly political send messages to the most important spheres of world power. The truth is that the Architecture embedded in each one of them is particular and they constitute an inevitable research material. Chinese, Greeks, Romans, Germans, Peruvians, all of them built walls with differentiated styles and functions.

This wall is political, religious, military, socio-cultural, imperialist, conqueror, multi-programmatic, governmental, ceremonial, of containment. Is a wall made with a lot of walls. History is repeating itself. The never ending of human civilization against human civilization. It is a xenophobic wall, anti-Semitic, homophobic, racist, dictatorial, fascist, religious fanatic, consumerist, perverse, villainous. A bastard wall, orphan, incestuous, adulterous, pedophile, necrophile. The present investigation is in the search of the walls that ever existed, in order to extract from them their inner intelligence to combine them in one. The great, final, total wall will end with the man itself as we know it. History repeats itself, but this time is the most horrendous of all. All lies and truths reunite in The Total Wall.