When I met with Ronald Rael at Stout Books, I knew we’d be covering a wide span of territory—both geographic and conceptual. Ronald is an architect, an artist, and an educator, but above all, he is someone who resists easy categorization; when I asked him whether he considers himself more an artist or a designer, he hesitated to claim either title too firmly. “Titles and disciplines and silos,” he said, with a shrug. “I feel more liberated from those.” Our conversation moved through ideas about land, identity, technology, play, and the spaces where responsibilities and freedoms overlap.
Rael’s practice is rooted in the concept of the expanded borderlands—a term that stretches beyond the contemporary U.S.-Mexico boundary to encompass centuries of shifting geography, culture, and identity. To Ronald, the border is a hybrid condition. It’s a space of overlap, friction, paradox. “Things come together in remarkable ways—violent or beautiful ways,” he said. That notion of things both joining and pulling apart—and what gets revealed in those moments—became a through-line in our conversation.
I have always been struck by the joy, humor, and curiosity embedded in Ronald’s approach to management with an often politically charged condition. In a field like architecture, that playfulness is not unburdened; we explored balancing exploration with responsibility. Rael shared that it is in a hopscotch between art and design that he finds room to play.
He said, “I love being in that space where you can unleash ideas with complete freedom and abandon…” His project, Teeter Totter Wall—an impromptu idea that evolved into a global symbol—began not with a grant or a plan, but with a child-like curiosity. “Then there's that moment where you have to cross the line all the way back to the other side to say, ‘okay, now this is what the outcome of those investigations is responsible for.’” The same spirit and community ties have since led to quieter, more enduring projects—like building mud ovens in migrant shelters along the border. Like many of his projects, these mud ovens combine ancestral and contemporary technology to address humanitarian needs.
When I asked how new technologies like artificial intelligence might play into his work, he shared a framework I found both poetic and grounding: the three AIs—artificial intelligence, additive intelligence, and ancestral intelligence. Ronald is equally invested in the most cutting edge approaches and 10,000-year-old knowledge systems.
As we wrapped up, I asked what he’s most curious about right now. His answer connected so many of the threads we’d discussed: ecological, scalable housing made from earth using robotic technology. A reintroduction of land-based heritage practices for a 21st-century world. Buildings that aren’t alternative or symbolic, but livable, modern, and beautiful.
Ronald’s vision isn’t about romanticizing the past or fetishizing the future. It’s about letting them coexist—letting them meet, overlap, and maybe even play together