A installation of three pink seesaws built across a section of the U.S. border wall has been named by the London Design Museum as the overall winner of the Beazley Designs of the Year 2020.
Installed in July 2019 between the cities of El Paso in Texas and Ciudad Juárez in Mexico, the Teeter-Totter Wall was a temporary interactive piece of artwork that enabled "children on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border to play together," according to the museum.
It consisted of "three bright pink see-saws slotted into gaps in the steel boundary wall by the designers," Ronald Rael, a professor of architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, and Virginia San Fratello, an associate professor of design at San José State University.
They worked with Colectivo Chopeke, a Mexican-based art collective.
© LUIS TORRESTOPSHOT - American and Mexican families play with a toy called "up and down" (Seesaw swing) over the Mexican border with US at the Anapra zone in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua State, Mexico on July 28, 2019.
TOPSHOT - American and Mexican families play with a toy called "up and down" (Seesaw swing) over the Mexican border with US at the Anapra zone in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua State, Mexico on July 28, 2019. (LUIS TORRES/)
"We are totally surprised by this unexpected honor, which we share with the Juarez based art collective, @colectivo.chopeke," Rael wrote on Instagram on Tuesday.
"Most importantly, it comes at a time when we are hopeful for change and that we start building more bridges instead of walls," he added.
The design was installed for less than an hour, but footage of kids and adults from both sides of the wall playing together quickly went viral.
"For the first time, children from both El Paso, Texas, and the Anapra community in Mexico were invited to connect with their [neighbors], in an attempt to create unity at the politically divisive border," the museum said, according to NPR.
"Women and children completely dis-empowered this wall for a moment, for 40 minutes," Rael said in a podcast a few months after the installation.
"There was a kind of sanctuary hovering over this event," he added.
The team worked with a group of Mexican metal artisans and Omar Rios, a member of Colectivo Chopeke, to build neon pink teeter totters which had sparkly, striped banana seats.
Tim Marlow, chief executive and director of the museum said that, "the Teeter-Totter Wall encouraged new ways of human connection. It remains an inventive and poignant reminder of how human beings can transcend the forces that seek to divide us."
The project was chosen out of more than 70 nominees from dozens of countries.
The prestigious Beazley Designs of the Year is an "annual celebration of the most original and exciting products, concepts and designers across the globe today," according to a press release.
Voters were asked to select their favorite designs across six categories that "inspire, represent change in their field and capture this moment in time."
All of this year's category winners (Digital, Architecture, Transport, Graphics, Product and Fashion) "contain powerful messages of change and demonstrate design's capacity to explore new ideas that confront some of the difficult issues the world currently faces," Marlow said.
The Teeter-Totter wall won both the transport category, as well as the overall design prize.