Thomas Glassford

La esquina/Jardines de Playas de Tijuana (The Corner/Tijuana Beach Gardens) was commissioned by inSite as an urban rehabilitation project for the area of Playas de Tijuana where the border fence extends into the Pacific Ocean. The Tijuana bullring, the border fence, and the Playas de Tijuana’s tourist corridor define the renovated area. The intervention was not so much an “artistic” project per se; rather, it was conceived as a response to the ecological crisis and the dysfunctionality of urban planning projects in both countries, and was intended to facilitate the recovery and development of communal areas. Thomas Glassford and Jose Parral took on the challenge of designing the park project and immediately focused on aesthetically transforming the area into a recreational zone with ecological sensitivity. To this end, they refrained from overlaying the area with new artistic or cultural monuments and, instead, sought to respond to the particular conditions of the landscape and its historical importance as a site of demarcation between Mexico and the US. The challenges involved in negotiating the creation of the garden were manifold, and included preventing the increasing erosion of the land, limiting traffic circulation, improving basic services, and, above all, generating new patterns of growth and urban restructuring while respecting the area’s natural environment. The design of ‘La esquina/Jardines de Playas de Tijuana’ renders more visible the ecological interconnectedness of the region.

Curators: Osvaldo Sánchez and Tania Ragasol
Venue: Playas de Tijuana

Acknowledgments