Ronald Rael Libri

No longer sovereign limits of exchange, borders are at once indexes of national as well as individual identities. Borderwall as Architecture interrogates how the the securitization of the United States' southernmost limits radically define new landscapes of transaction that can also be visualized as a tool of violence. Among Ronald Rael's elegant ironies seen across anticipatory yet moving drawings and projects, the Mexico-US border fence/wall registers a figurative logic in which seemingly banal aspects of porosity, transparency, and locality also confront architecture's and our own roles in two nations' un-becoming.-Sean Anderson, Curator, Architecture and Design, MOMA

Although 3D printing promises a revolution in many industries, primarily industrial manufacturing, nowhere are the possibilities greater than in the field of product design and modular architecture. Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello, of the cutting-edge San Francisco–based design firm Emerging Objects, have developed remarkable techniques for "printing" from a wide variety of powders, including sawdust, clay, cement, rubber, concrete, salt, and even coffee grounds, opening an entire realm of material, phenomenological, and ecological possibilities to designers. In addition to case studies and illustrations of their own work, Rael and San Fratello offer guidance for sourcing alternative materials, specific recipes for mixing compounds, and step-by-step instructions for conducting bench tests and setting parameters for material testing, to help readers to understand the process of developing powder-based materials and their unique qualities.