Warning: This episode contains some curse words and a mention of sexual assault.
Listen and subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform:
For those that live in border cities—most often those with binational families, businesses, and personal cultures; images of the U.S.-Mexico border that are conjured up in nightly news segments or political debates can be drastically different from their lived reality. This is similarly true for those who study or work on the physical and metaphysical structures around this geographical divide.
What are we not seeing along our southern border? This is what Ten Across founder seeks to uncover in this episode with Brian Farling and Eddie Jones of Jones Studio, an Arizona architecture firm that was chosen to design four U.S. Land Ports of Entry, and Dr. Irasema Coronado, a distinguished academic of border studies and product of Nogales, an Arizona/Mexico border city with a rich binational history.
Notable Quotes:
The way I think about what we’re trying to do is that each one of these ports of entry are almost a front door to the country…. And then, you know, the resolution of what the structure is doing and the materials and all of those kinds of things just sort of fall in line behind that aspiration of coming into a garden and being greeted with dignity and light and friendly people. — Brian Farling on Jones Studio’s way of approaching their U.S. Land Port of Entry designs.
You have to look at the historical context of what U.S. foreign policy did. And I’m talking about the 40s, the 50s, the 60s — a lot of interventions that went in. A lot of destabilizing governments, a lot of extractive industries went in. Like Guatemala — United Fruit exported everything. — Irasema Coronado on the events that inspired the current migrant crisis south of the U.S. border.
Guest Speakers
Dr. Irasema Coronado is a professor and director of the Arizona State University School of Transborder Studies. She is the co-author of the books “Fronteras No Mas: Toward Social Justice at the U.S.-Mexico Border” and “Políticas: Latina Public Officials in Texas.” Irasema was previously a professor in the Department of Social Sciences at University of Texas at El Paso.
Eddie Jones is the founder and principal of Jones Studio, a Tempe-based architecture, design and public art studio. A firm with 44 years of experience, they have designed and completed four U.S. land ports of entry in Washington, Arizona, and California, all focused on creating a dignified entry process for migrants and visitors. The studio’s latest publication, STRIVE: Jones Studio Adventures in Architecture, will release this fall.
Brian Farling is a principal of Jones Studio and award-winning designer for projects that are uniquely attuned to their environments.
