The intangible effects of walls | Alexandra Auer

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 3 April 2020

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

More barriers exist now than at the end of World War II, says designer Alexandra Auer. And when you erect one wall, you unwittingly create a second -- an "us" versus "them" partition in the mind that compromises our collective safety. With intriguing results from her social design project focused on two elementary schools separated by a fence, Auer encourages us to dismantle our biases and regain perspective on all the things we have in common.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This TED Talk features industrial designer Alexandra Hour,
0:05.0	recorded live at TEDx Eindhoven 2019.
0:11.0	Human kind loves to build walls.
0:14.0	Have you ever noticed that?
0:16.0	We built walls for everything, for shelter, for protection, for privacy.
0:22.8	Over the past 70 years, the number of barriers between countries has doubled.
0:29.2	Right now, there are more walls than at the end of the Second World War, more than during the Cold War.
0:36.6	Growing up in Germany, the fall of the Berlin Wall always felt to me like the introduction
0:41.3	of a new world, a world without barriers. But since the attacks of 9-11, the construction
0:47.8	has experienced an extreme rise. Since then, the amount has doubled with about 30 new
0:53.9	structures that were planned or built.
0:56.0	Walls and fences are often built with the intention of security,
1:01.0	security from another group of people, from crime, from illegal trades.
1:06.0	But walls and fences only provide us with a feeling of security,
1:13.2	which is different from real security.
1:16.2	Even though they might make us feel safe,
1:19.2	the structures themselves can't protect us.
1:22.0	Instead, they do something else.
1:23.3	They separate.
1:26.1	They create an us and a them.
1:28.1	They establish an enemy.
1:33.3	Walls make us build a second wall in our head, a mental wall.
	...

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