Study Architecture 
ProPEL 
Author(s): Christopher L. Calott
The border is now a place where a huge ecotone of flesh and capital and guns is rubbing up against itself as two cultures and two economies and two languages meet and mingle and erupt into something we cannot yet name. Charles Bowden, Juarez: The Laboratory of our Future This paper cannot yet be written as it will be a summary, critique, synthesis and presentation of the 7th Concurso Internacional ARQUINE FRONTERA/BORDER competition for the design of a pedestrian border crossing at the Anapra, Ciudad Juarez, Mexico/Sunland Park, New Mexico international boundary which will be juried on March 11–12, 2005 in Mexico City. The author of this paper is both responsible for the development of the Program for this international competition and also, a final juror. A place where first- and third-worlds collide, the U.S./Mexico border region where El Paso, Texas meets Ciudad Juarez, Mexico is an urban and cultural experiment where marginality, centrality and cultural identity are constantly in flux. With a population of 2.5 million, this is the world’s largest border community. Anapra is a 30,000-person squatter settlement on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez which practically emerged overnight and literally crashes into the international border and is met by an INS fence at Sunland Park, New Mexico. The competition problem is to design a pedestrian crossing and, possibly facilitate other programs, at this highly charged place with control stations on either side of the border. Issues relating to national identity, culture, politics, boundary, site, landscape and, regional production are, among many others, implicit in this design challenge. The author will be responsible for recording salient comments and discussions on the topic of the international border by a prestigious bi-national jury as well as documenting the themes which emerge in the competition submissions.
Volume Editors
David Covo & Gabriel Mérigo Basurto
ISBN
0-935502-57-2
