Companies will also build smaller 10-foot models for penetration tests. The prototypes will be used to decide upon a design for the wall that ultimately is constructed along the border.

“Teeter-Totter Wall” – a project that subverted the politically divisive US-Mexico border by turning it into a pop up play area – has won the 2020 Beazley Design of the Year.

Canales, 49, had taught design solutions focusing on the border at Yale and Princeton and written on the topic extensively. “I can’t keep doing this theoretically,” she remembered thinking.