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Micro-Interventions: A Guide for Spatial Meddling
by Vikitha Reddy Bezawada

︎Full project brochure

By studying the typology of border checkpoints, the proposed guide demonstrates a framework to reclaim architecture’s agency from being a bureaucratic machinery in service of political agendas to a design discipline conscious of spatial, programmatic, and social relationships.

The current building typology for border checkpoints is based on policy makers’ need to demarcate nations and restrict movement rather than being a stimulus to inspire engaging narratives. The project investigates the Ambassador Bridge checkpoint in Detroit - one of the busiest crossings on the Northern border - as an opportunity to usurp this condition. By questioning the character of the current iteration, the experience of checkpoints is redirected towards a more accessible infrastructure. The distinction between the user (security officers and border patrol) and the visitor (local and international citizens) is blurred by introducing spatial conditions for shared experiences, providing an unbiased experience to all occupants through equal access, and de-emphasizing the ‘checkpoint’ as the critical point in the process.

Represented as a foldable guide, the project is tailored to act as a pedagogical instrument easily accessible to the architectural discourse. Its framework demonstrates guidelines for near future execution to generate a power shift in how our built environment will be shaped. Encouraging values of transparency and intentionality, the proposal prompts architects to use design to continually reshape relationships established by political actors. As an urged alternative to the segregating strategies prompted by the current pandemic, the guide aspires to transcend the contentious politics of trade and immigration - not by ignoring them, but by using them as a starting point for the reconsideration of different scales of boundaries.