Contested Surfaces. Aesthetics of Colonization for Urban Coexistence

This paper proposes to extract new foundations for designers to operate in an increasingly diverse and transformative urban landscape. It focuses on unpacking current design approaches in the epidermis of the border city of Tijuana: a palpable case of erosion and constant reinvention of the urban fabric challenged by temporality, legality and circumstance. Although it does not intend to predict the future image of the built environment, it does intend to expose designers, through the lens of Tijuana, to the evolving paradox of assertiveness and adaptability in environments of extreme contradictions and visual noise.