The School of Architecture welcomes Ronald Rael as the Fall 2019 Convocation speaker. Rael, professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is an applied architectural researcher, author, design entrepreneur, and thought leader in the fields of additive manufacturing and earthen architecture. He is the author of Borderwall as Architecture: A Manifesto for the U.S.-Mexico Boundary (University of California Press 2017), an illustrated biography and protest of the wall dividing the U.S. from Mexico (featured in a TED talk by Rael), and Earth Architecture (Princeton Architectural Press, 2008), a history of building with earth in the modern era.
Rael San Fratello, the studio he co-founded with architect Virginia San Fratello, was named a 2014 Emerging Voice by The Architectural League of New Yorkâone of the most coveted awards in North American architecture. Most recently, Rael San Fratello has installed "Teetertotter Wall," three pink see-saws on the US-Mexico border.