The Road from Prada Marfa to Montecito

What is the long road from Prada Marfa to Montecito? It’s the road that runs along the US-Mexico border which the Riv decided to look at because, well, timing is everything. Our border, of course, is a highly complex issue, with as many opinions as there are people and bots. Not to mention that Mexico has its own challenges on its own southern border. It’s going to take some really smart people to resolve this.

Fortunately, unlike the internet which is filled with “experts” pontificating about the right way to fix the border from the comfort of their mom’s basement, the all new Riv sought out actual experts who’ve spent their lives studying the US-Mexico boundary. One such expert is Ronald Rael, a professor of architecture at Cal and author of Borderwall as Architecture. In addition, Prof. Rael is a bit of an internet G.O.A.T. in his own right.

Rael is one of the architects (along with his wife Virginia San Fratello) of the iconic Prada Marfa “art intervention” near Marfa which you can read all about in the Riv. Years later, Rael also installed pink border-spanning teeter totters through the US-Mexico border wall, which are as profound as they are visually spectacular. The border seesaws won a slew of design awards and you can/must read about those in the Riv as well.