Gimnasio Campestre / MGP Arquitectura y Urbanismo

Architects: MGP arquitectura y Urbanismo / Felipe González-Pacheco
Location: Bogotá, Colombia
Designers: Felipe González-Pacheco, Alvaro Bohorquez, Alberto Aranda
Team: Juliana Sorzano, Paola Moreno, José Cohecha, Camilo Correa
Construction: Exacta proyecto total, Luis Guillermo Vallejo
Project Year: 2011
Project Area: 6,200 sqm
Photographs: Andrés Valbuena

Master Plan  Campestre Gymnasium 2022

In 2007, the Board of Directors and the School’s dean decided to begin an ambitious transformation of their facilities, which had a history of 65 years. To accomplish the plan they hired MGP Arquitectura y Urbanism as the designers and Exacta as the construction managers. Both partners studied in the institution 30 years earlier.

MGP developed the Master plan 2022. In it they established the way to proceed in order to make this transformation possible in terms of time and space. This plan is based on reinforcing the Patio concept as the main space typology of the school, which is the tradition of the school since its first design by the Colombian architect Alberto Bonilla in 1938. The plan then is designed around a sequence of five patios: the arts patio, the army patio, the joy Patio, the sports patio, the pre-school patio. Also in the plan, 9 projects are set to configure these patios from 2010 to 2022. The first of these projects is the one shown here, open in February 2011.

Project 1: Enrique Low Murtra Building

This building contains the center for the arts with laboratories in its base and two volumes on top for the classrooms, one for middle school and the other for high school. The building is the academic heart of the institution completed by the academic departments under construction now in an interesting revival of the old high school building.

The site is ideal for academic activities as it is surrounded by old trees, looking out over the beautiful mountains of Bogota. The Building occupies the territory surrounding the new Patio for the arts, split in two to let the mountain view in and set on a platform that’s under ground level to multiply the chances to enter the project.

The students enter and exit the corridors in a way that merges the interior with the exterior, assuring that they are aware of their environment. The facades are defined by a metal celosia, protecting the classrooms from direct sunlight and diluting the buildings volume. In an attempt to merge the inside and outside, we used the colors from the mountain and the ground in combination with beige concrete walls built with wood that’s imprinted on the material.