Walls as a Space of Pacification

Abstract

Today we live in a world that daily erects walls on the most delicate borders between countries. Over the centuries, the walls have acquired a dual significance for the city. They make the city an island, creating a feeling of unity as well as security. The city and its citizens were one with the walls. But the walls are also the only contact that the city has with the outside world, thus representing the point of passage between inside and outside, between the foreigner and the citizen. This paper attempts to analyze the key role that the the walls must play in these border areas. The choice to erect a wall, if in the beginning it was born to propose an element of separation, can instead become a privileged element of connection with the outside. In this regard, I will analyze the project of the architect Charles Tzu Wei Chiang, the BiNational Community Skyscraper, which proposes a reinterpretation of the walls erected on the border between the USA and Mexico by building a skyscraper on them where the two communities meet and merge together.