VASE LECTURES

“Mud y Robots”

Ronald Rael will talk about his new initiative, Mud y Robots, a new paradigm in building construction, coupling humankind’s oldest building material with advanced additive manufacturing technology to create housing that can save the planet.

About the artist

Ronald Rael (b. 1971, Conejos County, Colorado) is a trained architect, professor, activist, design technologist, multi-generational rancher and traditional builder. He is the Chair of the Department of Art Practice and Eval Li Memorial Chair in Architecture at the University of California Berkeley. His work blurs the borders between architecture, art, technology, land-based practices and social justice. He writes books, forms startup companies, advocates for human rights at the U.S.–Mexico border, creates software, invents novel materials and new forms of construction, and designs buildings as an applied research enterprise.

His work often combines indigenous and traditional materials and processes with contemporary technologies to speak to the contrasts, contradictions, and complexities of othered subjects, ranging from people to materials, and places, in contemporary society. 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), His studio, Rael San Fratello, installed the award-winning “Teetertotter Wall,” three pink see-saws on the US-Mexico border in 2020.

His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, The London Design Museum, LACMA, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Renwick Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Website: rael-sanfratello.com
Instagram: @rrael

Co-sponsored with:

2024-2025 Visiting Artists