Borders are spaces of transition—thresholds between areas with different characteristics. Whether political and imposed through human agency, or natural and made manifest through geographical features, borders have been, are, and will continue to be a staging ground for civilization’s greatest challenges. As urbanization pushes human activity towards Earth’s hinterlands, and existential threats such as—but not limited to—nationalism, warfare and climate change make geopolitical agreements more precarious, how we choose to choreograph and intersect these liminal spaces will reveal much about our priorities.
This international design ideas competition—the second in the CBDX Series—asks, How can designers intervene in borders? What logics of territory are necessary to mediate between areas on either side of a divide? Is it about “or”? Perhaps “and”? Perhaps neither? Perhaps both? And as advancements in technology further shorten distances and render immaterial previous restrictions across space, What even is the future of borders? How do we design borderlands?
