March 2012
4 posts
February 2012
7 posts
“Cross often? Make it simple, use NEXUS.”
– Moodbook Part 2: The NEXUS System
The NEXUS system is a joint program between Canada and the Unites States. The idea is that it is a method to allow low risk travellers to cross more easily. Membership in the program brings with it substantial benefits for card holders including self-serve kiosks...
January 2012
2 posts
December 2011
1 post
October 2011
3 posts
Deb Chachra is one of the godparents of Border Town. More than one, we called her for advice on putting together activities or dealing with unexpected situations as the studio progressed. Here, she talks about Toronto, a border town 140km from the US boundary, but not for logistical reasons.
My hometown, Toronto, is 140 km from the nearest international border, but it’s a border city. Not one...
Our Foreign Correspondent from Monrovia, Matthew Jones, examines the roles of language, religion and even gerrymandering in the making of borders in Africa. (click through for the full text and images)
Perhaps the most often-repeated sentiment about modern African states and the borders that demarcate them are that they were devised by European colonial powers, either as arbitrary lines on a ...
“The line between Gerlach and its neighbor isn’t merely one of land management....”
– Quinn Norton on the uneasy relationship between two towns on the edge of the Black Rock Desert. And then on an entirely different kind of border.
Your Entry Pass to Black Rock City « Snarkmarket
September 2011
20 posts
Niagara Falls
Writer, performer and comedian Heather Gold shares her story of growing up near the “second greatest disappointment in American married life”…Niagara Falls.
______________________________
Niagara Falls.
“People live there?” Forget living. I grew up there. Like an accident at the side of the road, it’s a place everyone knows about but no one can imagine...
“The shipping container is like a bizarre embassy: portable instead of...”
– Rob Holmes & Stephen Becker examine the strange case of cities, miles from any national boundary, that are nonetheless border towns.
border box – mammoth // building nothing out of something
Speciation: A Diagram Book is a one-of-a-kind, handmade book, utilizing a unique, 4-part overlapping pagination scheme to “animate” the processes of speciation theory, from a topological perspective
Adam Rothstein - Speciation
“The image, meant to at least simulate the intimate, had been blatantly...”
– Andrew Sempere is an interactive artist and a design researcher. For this project, he considers the lines and traces of borders and censorship in a borderless medium, where absences don’t register at all.
Border Patrol | HiLobrow
Euregio
Around the triangle where Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands come together, the mental maps of people automatically stretch to the other side of the border. Being just the periphery from the capital-cities’ point of view, these areas have developed their own perspective on spatial developments. Why take a three hours drive to Amsterdam, when Cologne is only one hour away?
This border area...
“Every city has myriad divisions where people close and lock a door, declaring a...”
– Schuyler Towne is a lock researcher. For Border Town, he begins with the East German Stasi’s Keys of Heaven intrusion programme, moves to the symbolic power of locks across cultures, and ends with a surprising thought experiment. Don’t miss this one.
http://borders.schuylertowne.com/
“TV wasn’t completely lost to me, though. Luckily, I lived in metro Detroit, five...”
– Tim Carmody is a writer, thinker, bookfuturist and all around smart person. He grew up in a border town.
The border virtues of Buddy Cole « The Idler
1 tag
“The village of Votbari is a tiny island of India surrounded by a sea of...”
– India, Bangladesh to help people stuck in enclaves - Boston.com
WatchBorder Town needs help to take our show on the road to Detroit! Could our helpers be…you?
August 2011
2 posts
July 2011
3 posts
June 2011
8 posts
Border Town Foreign Correspondents
We are delighted to announce the Border Town Foreign Correspondents! To enhance the Border Town project, we’ve invited five writers, designers and artists to join our discussion. These participants will be in communication with our core Toronto group and will be producing work for this blog.
Eleanor Saitta hacker, designer, artist & writer (dymaxion.org)
Eleanor makes a living and a...
1 tag
Border Town Participants
We are delighted to announce our Border Town design studio participants. Over the next 10 weeks this group will be getting together to think about and then make work that addresses the architectural and design problems that we find in cities built on or divided by borders and conflict zones.
Thank you to everyone who applied. The response was wonderful.
Greg J. Smith Spatial Researcher &...
Tomorrow is the Application Deadline for Border... →