Exclusive Interview with Fonna Forman

"Our practice is located in a zone of global conflict and poverty that divides two cities, two countries, two continents and two hemispheres. The border cities of San Diego and Tijuana together comprise the largest binational metropolitan region in the world," says Fonna Forman.

World Architecture Community's editor-in-chief Berrin Chatzi Chousein led an exclusive interview with Fonna Forman within the scope of reSITE 2017: Invisible City event. Fonna Forman is a Professor of Political Theory at the University of California, San Diego and co-director of Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman with architect and urbanist Teddy Cruz who gave an extraordinary keynote speech on border walls at the reSITE conference.

Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman has been examining the creative strategies of informal, small-scale communities between San Diego and Tijuana for years. Their research and architectural practices aim to produce alternative (economic, design, policy etc.) models for excluded zones and communities of the US-Mexican border. Fonna Forman says that "In the context of isolationist dynamics across the globe today, physical border walls serve not only as barriers against 'invasion', but mark an era of 'patriotic' withdrawal from international cooperation in a futile attempt to recover an 'alien-less' sovereignty. Building walls is the physicalization of mistrust - typically by a powerful and rich country against a vulnerable one. It is the most overt evidence that there is little faith in social, economic or political solutions to conflict among people."