Designers Want to Build Golden Wall Around Mar-a-Lago to “Keep the ‘Bad Guys’ In”

A small piece of the imagined fence beside a golfing patron of the Mar-a-Lago (all images courtesy New World Design)

New World Design, a Chicago-based architecture and design firm, has proposed a gilded, electrified design for Donald Trump's preposterously costly border wall. First, however, the company would like to build a 30-foot prototype around Trump's "de facto presidential residence" on the Florida coast, the Mar-a-Lago — "to keep the 'bad guys' in."

The design mimics a picket-fence reminiscent of America's good ol' days of sock hops and segregation (when "America was great"), plated in a glimmering gold that speaks "to Mr. Trump's decorating taste." The company brags the design also allows "bad guys on the other side" to "look through and imagine the riches and moral integrity of being American." Ha.

The satirical campaign comes amidst what is now officially the longest government shutdown in history, fueled by Trump's unnerving determination to secure $5.7 billion to build a massive wall between the United States and Mexico.

New World Design's imaginary gilded fence along the border

"Our office has had an ongoing frustration with Mr. Trump's rally for his irrational border wall … As [designers] we decided that we needed [to] speak out in the best way we know how … using our design skills," New World Design's Jeffrey Roberts, the creator of the GoFundMe, told Hyperallergic in an email exchange. "We hope to activate people to speak out against the ab surdity of Mr. Trump's border wall mission. The ideas and money spent should be used in a rational manner that goes toward actually solving the U.S.'s immigration problem. A massive, expensive, dysfunctional border wall will not achieve this."

The company launched a GoFundMe to fund its Mar-a-Lago fortification in response to a campaign launched by Air Force veteran Brian Kolfage, which raised an astronomical $20 million from citizens to "crowdfund" Trump's wall (before it was all refunded). Roberts says that when the architects at New World Design heard about the project they knew they "had to counter that campaign with something more intelligent. Most importantly, instead of the raised funds going to a preposterous border wall, they will go help those impacted by immigration policy failings."

The wall, directly across from a polluting plant

"We see the prototype as a moral alternative to the Trumpian supporter's GoFundMe effort to amass donated funds for the irrational and inhumane border wall," the group explained on its website. "The benefit to our wall effort is that in the event the wall is not built around Mar-a-Lago (highly likely), all funds will go to the International Refugee Assistance Program."

Among the company's "Trumpian" designs (which they say match the "illogical absurdity" of the actual effort to build a wall), is pumping the fence full of electricity powered by "six new coal fired power plants built along the border, further supporting America's fossil fuel future." They also say the wall will be "built with Mexican labor and paid for by Canada (USMCA, trade gains against the Canadian dairy market)."