A DEEPER RECESS 005: an interview with Ronald Rael

We speak to American architect & artist Ronald Rael from the centre of Adobe Oasis, his adobe mud sculpture for Desert X 2025 in the Coachella Valley, California.

05 May 2025

Welcome to the latest edition of A Deeper Recess, the reader-supported newsletter from recessed.space that brings you a single, focused interview with a leading cultural practitioner. We have already chatted to Peter Cook, Virginia Overton, Derrick Adams & Kengo Kuma previously, now bringing you an interview with Ronald Rael.

An interview with Ronald Rael

Born in 1971 in Conejos County, Colorado, Ronald Rael studied architecture at Columbia and with the architect Virginia San Fratello, Rael runs Rael San Fratello, a social practice design studio. In 2020, they came to public prominence with Teeter Totter Wall, also winning the London Design Museum’s 2020 Beazley Award. Their widely circulated project saw three pink see-saws that sat through gaps in the Mexico/US border wall allowing residents of El Paso and the Anapra community of Mexico to unite through play.

Rael is also deeply interested in the future of an architecture that benefits communities & the environment, which often incorporates cutting edge technologies. He has overseen pioneering work in 3D printing & has a design & research practice connecting indigenous & traditional materials with modern technologies & social issues.

All these points come up in his conversation with recessed.space editor Will Jennings, below, which took place at the centre of Adobe Oasis, Rael’s presentation at this year’s Desert X, the biannual sculpture festival that takes place across California’s Coachella Valley. As excellently shown in exclusive photography by Carlo Zambon, the sculpture is formed of nine distinct geometric walls, zig-zagging & folding to create a series of open & shaded spaces. It is sited at the edge of Palm Springs, home to many landmarks of mid-century domestic architecture, though also a city with many surviving adobe mud houses.

The work was made by Rael & his team with the help of a 3D printing robot, using an earth mix to fuse cutting edge technology with traditional building processes. Deliberately, it is not a complete architectural object, but more a sculpture with an architectural language & spatial moments.

The conversation started by discussing how Adobe Oasis sits somewhere between architecture & art: