Dear Mr. Vonier and Mr. Elefante,

On February 24th, 2017, the Department of Homeland Security issued a Request for Proposals for U.S./Mexico border wall prototypes. As leaders of The American Institute of Architects, your duty is to publicly denounce this action and to blacklist firms participating in the sincere design and construction of any such prototypes and subsequent wall segments.



As stated on your website, “The AIA stands for values and principles that promote free movement and association.” Because of this, you took a strong stance against the recently issued travel and immigration ban, and we thank you for that. You must continue to uphold those same values by speaking out against the U.S./Mexico border wall construction.



Architects, engineers, and designers are often so enticed by the financial prospects of a large scale project/RFP that moral and ethical considerations of whether the project should go forward in the first place are rarely considered. The border wall is currently the most important instance in our lives for which we must make that ethical decision. Building the wall is easy enough. Its removal is not. Once constructed, it will quickly become the status quo from which future generations will gauge normalcy. A physical barrier between adjacent countries should not be considered normal for a peaceful society.



As architecture students we are taught to design responsibly and to pursue and tap the connective potential of architecture. To allow for the design and building of a wall would mean the manifestation of a careless and dissocializing ideology. The wall would be an entity that deviates from diversity and inclusion in a way that is entirely counter to principles held not only by the AIA but also by the United States. The wall aims to delineate a destructive stance towards “otherness,” and it is your responsibility as leaders of the AIA to criticize such actions. As part of the AIA’s constituency, we value the organization’s position on this issue. The stance you take should be an expression of the principles that we, the up-and-coming leaders in the profession, hold, and an expression of the ideological course that the AIA, and therefore architecture within the United States, is taking.



Constructing the wall is irresponsible socially, economically, and ecologically. Therefore, we ask you to use your authority as leaders of the AIA to broadly and publicly denounce its realization in any form.