RAEL SAN FRATELLO — love good color

how Virginia San Fratello is using COLOR for GOOD

Virginia San Fratello is an architect, artist, and educator who is currently the Chair-elect of the Department of Design at SJSU and teaches in the Interior Design Program. Virginia studied architecture at Columbia University and practiced architecture and interior design for many years in Berlin and New York City prior to transitioning to her own practice and academia. In addition to teaching Virginia has a creative and activist design studio called RAEL SAN FRATELLO as well as a tech startup called Emerging Objects which is a make tank that develops materials and applications for 3D printing. We have been teaching Virginia's design students our LOVE GOOD COLOR Workshop for the last 2 years. We appreciate Virginia's support and passion for teaching and the invaluable insights she has given us in return.

Laura Guido-Clark: What motivated you to do a project at the border?

Virginia San Fratello: We were motivated to make proposals that rethink the border wall between the USA and Mexico when the Secure Fence Act was passed in 2006 by George W. Bush. We had been working close to the border on projects such as Prada Marfa and the Box Box House and traveling along and across the border with our design students and we saw how the construction of the border was negatively affecting the lives of people who lived there. We saw that flooding was occurring in places like El Paso because of the wall, animals could not follow their natural migrations and families and friends who previously had moved back and forth to see each other were having more difficulty connecting. We made a series of proposals for the border wall that included adding functionality such as solar panels, that could be used to power cities on both sides of the border. We made proposals that looked at the idea of play and social infrastructure and proposed that the border wall become a bicycle trail or a fulcrum for a teeter-totter.

LG-C: Talk to me about the teeter-totter, how did that come about?

VSF: We drew the teeter-totters back in 2009 — they speak to issues of inequality, of separation, of balances, the kinds of words that one uses when talking about trade balances or labor balances or inequality, racial inequality, or inequalities of wealth and poverty. And so, all these kinds of dichotomies are present in the teeter-totter: sharing, community, collaboration, generosity. These are all aspects of what one feels when they are on a teeter-totter. You have to give, and you take, and there is this relationship where you depend on the kindness of the person on the other side. The actions that take place on one side have a direct consequence on the other.

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LG-C: How long did it take to design?

VSF: We designed the version that was built in just a few hours. We did a sketch that showed how long the steel lever should be, 14 feet, and how it would pass through the fence. The fulcrum is located about 2 feet above the ground which allows the rider to go 4’ up in the air - just enough to be thrilling, because your feet don’t touch the ground, but not dangerous! We also designed how handlebars would be inserted into the steel lever. We bought banana bicycle seats that have metallic stripes and glitter in them to be the seats on the teeter-totter - it’s important to have a bit of levity. In an early prototype, we also had rubber grips and a horn! We worked with Collective Chopeke and Tallier Herreria in Cuidad Juarez to fabricate the teeter-totters.

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LG-C: How did you select the location?

VSF: We choose this site between Anapra, Mexico and Sunland Park, New Mexico for our teeter-totters. It’s a location where the village of Anapra comes up to 3 feet away from the wall and there are many families and children here. In Anapra the children can sometimes be seen playing on and climbing up the barrier as though it were a jungle gym. There is also a close residential neighborhood on the American side. This section of the wall was built in 2017. This section of the fence is designed to permit wolves to crisscross the border but not people. The vertical steel posts are spaced 4” apart, the same dimension as a guardrail on a stair - narrow enough that a child’s head won’t get stuck between the posts but wide enough to pass something through the wall at this point.

LG-C: What role did color play and how did you decide on that particular color?

VSF: Color is always important. It’s usually the first thing we notice and we knew the color we chose would have emotional power. Color can sway thinking, change actions, and cause reactions. It can irritate or soothe you, raise your blood pressure or suppress your appetite. When used in the right way color can send a message, we choose this particular shade of pink to send a message of resistance. This color of pink is used to paint crosses in Juarez that are memorials to the women who were killed in the femicides that began in the 1990s. They are installed throughout the city and the surrounding desert in places where women’s bodies have been found. The people who live in Juarez, know what this color represents, and it has meaning and significance to the people who live at the border. The pink is a form of protest.

LG-C: Are you planning future projects?

VSF: YES! I would like to think that was just the beginning! We have made many proposals which can be seen in my partner Ronald Rael’s book called BORDEWALL as ARCHITECTURE: A Manifesto for the U.S.-Mexico Boundary.