Tag: bogota | ArchDaily

A Beating and Bleeding Heart: Bodies, Streets, and the Politics of Care in Bogotá

Sydney Coldren — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 07:30:00 +0000

It's wet season, but this morning's downpour does little to deter the rhythm along La Carrera Séptima. Cyclists and pedestrians weave past ambulatory vendors with carts of avocados, ginger sweets, and phone cases. Toy cars, lightbulbs, and hand-beaded jewelry glisten with raindrops, arranged neatly on tarps that demarcate vendors' territories. Police officers approach a recycler gathering bottles; a tourist bargains for a jacket; two women find each other in the middle of the road, embracing as their coats grow heavy with rain.

Building Public Life: How Bogotá and Mexico City Addressed Urban Inequality

Daniela Andino — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 07:30:00 +0000

In many Latin American cities, peripheral neighborhoods have historically had less access to the resources that make urban life more than just livable. Housing, transportation, and public services are the usual markers of that gap. But there is another gap that is harder to quantify: the absence of places where people can gather, learn, rest, and participate in collective life. When those spaces do not exist, the city not only fails to provide a service. It fails to acknowledge a presence.

When Modernism Meets Local Resistance: Housing and Urban Friction in Latin America

Daniela Andino — Sat, 30 May 2026 07:30:00 +0000

Modern housing was one of the places where modernism made its boldest promise: that architecture could reshape not only the city, but the way people lived within it. As Argentine architectural historian Ramón Gutiérrez has argued, popular housing is "the great unresolved subject, one that usually does not appear in histories of architecture." In Latin America, this absence is significant. Across the 20th century, expanding cities turned housing into one of the clearest ways to imagine urban change, and modernism entered not only plans and drawings, but apartments, neighborhoods, streets, and domestic routines.

El Camino: Housing Complex for Older Adults and Formerly Unhoused People / FP Arquitectura

Valentina Díaz — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 15:00:00 +0000

El Camino is the city’s largest public infrastructure for housing and social services, where people receive accommodation, food, clothing, and comprehensive care.

What Textiles and Translucency Bring to Public Space: 5 Lightweight Interventions

Miwa Negoro — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 04:00:00 +0000

What do lightweight materials bring to public space with an ethical, ecological, and non-extractive design principle? Various textile textures offer a point of entry, being closer to the body than heavy conventional structural materials. Through its flexibility and responsiveness, it enables a form of soft enclosure rather than a fixed boundary in architectural space. Responding to minimal environmental stimuli, the fabric brings continuous movements into space. When layered or assembled, it produces gradations of density, depth, and enclosure, while recent innovative fabrication technologies extend the possibilities of its form and structural durability.

Mobility Justice: Urban Equity in an Era of Innovation

Olivia Poston — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Every city contains two transportation systems. One is the visible network of roads, rail lines, sidewalks, and bus routes mapped in planning documents. The other is the invisible geography of privilege and exclusion embedded within it: the neighborhoods that received highways instead of parks, the communities whose bus routes were cut, the sidewalks that abruptly end at the edge of a district. For many years, built-environment professionals have treated infrastructure as a technical challenge. Mobility justice insists it is, fundamentally, a political one.

The Memory of the River / Alsar Atelier + SCRD + El Lider S.A.S + INGEACERO

Valentina Díaz — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 04:00:00 +0000

"The Memory of the River" is a project located at the intersection of public art and ephemeral architecture, conceived as a transitory infrastructure capable of reactivating urban spaces in the city of Bogotá through cultural uses. The initiative arises from the Secretariat of Culture, Recreation and Sports (SCRD) with Secretary Santiago Trujillo, the Director of Art, Culture, and Heritage Diego Parra, and structured by the Subdirectorate of Infrastructure and Cultural Heritage of the Secretariat, led by Edgar Figueroa, with a team composed of: Edgar Bernal, Emmanuel Guerra, Juliana Mendoza, Diego Rodríguez, and Juan Sebastián Robayo. They advocate for a temporary intervention—instead of a permanent one—as a strategy to decentralize cultural uses and allow different neighborhoods in the city to host their activities.

Faculty of Sciences - Pontifical Xavierian University / taller de arquitectura de bogotá

Valeria Silva — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 03:00:00 +0000

The design of the new Faculty of Sciences at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana faced unique challenges, such as achieving a harmonious balance with the historic Pablo VI building, activating the urban edge of Carrera Séptima, and coherently articulating the campus. The comprehensive project was structured around three fundamental components: A) A linear platform that establishes a human-scale front along Carrera Séptima, B) A tall tower with a broad and fluid base, defining a new iconic entrance to the campus, and C) An extensive landscape intervention and collective spaces that serve as a connector between different areas of the campus.

Los Nogales Preschool / taller de arquitectura de bogotá

Valentina Díaz — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 14:30:00 +0000

The preschool is a two-level building that originates from a configuration of three autonomous bars organized in a triangular shape, allowing for three connections to the campus: one for entry, another leading to the library, and the third toward the Park of Wonder or preschool park. The architecture is created with organic shapes that aim to avoid straight edges in favor of curves, giving fluidity to the space.

Music Practice Building - University of the Andes / Carolina Jaimes + Juan Esteban López + Alejandro Puentes

Valentina Díaz — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 15:00:00 +0000

Contained Resonances - Between the silence of concrete and the echo of wood, a new building discreetly emerges on the campus of the University of the Andes. The Music Box is a piece that contains more than it shows: an architecture that seeks not to impose itself, but to resonate.

Colombian-Hebrew School / Aarón Cohen + Angélica Mejía + Camilo Sellamén + Camilo Fuentes + Joel Amón

Valentina Díaz — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 15:00:00 +0000

The renovation of the Colegio Colombo Hebreo in Bogotá is the most ambitious project that the Jewish community has undertaken in the city of Bogotá in the last 40 years. After more than 70 years of organic growth without a defined master plan for its campus, a historic opportunity arose to rethink and project it for the next 50 years. The plan required the sale of almost a third of the land to finance the project, which necessitated a complete rethinking of the arrangement of the new buildings within the campus.

Atelier Tropical House / Yemail Arquitectura

Pilar Caballero — Tue, 23 Jul 2024 06:00:00 +0000

The project responds to a hybrid program format that mixes retail with cultural space on the first level and residential units connected by an interior courtyard on three levels. It promotes the idea of re-inhabiting a neighborhood that during the last decade has been transformed into an art district, introducing multicultural elements to the neighborhood and its inhabitants.

Heatherwick Studio's Educational Hub Celebrates Indigenous Crafts in Bogotá, Colombia

Nour Fakharany — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 05:30:00 +0000

Heatherwick Studio has just been selected to design a new educational facility for a university in Bogotá, Colombia. Marking Heatherwick’s Studio’s debut in South America, the construction is set to begin in 2025. Located on the existing campus in central Bogotá, the new design school and makers’ space for Universidad EAN will become a home for the university’s school of sustainable design. The seven-story structure features a striking façade adorned with colorful artistic columns and open terraces.

Lab Mobile / Alsar Atelier + SCA

Andreas Luco — Thu, 15 Feb 2024 16:00:00 +0000

Many of the urban limits of Bogota, Colombia, are typical examples of informal/ self-built environments. Constructed in stages, these environments have multiple social conditions that create a diverse range of phenomena. First, citizens in a state of homelessness invade the land and build the first structures with found materials. As these settlements become permanent residences, a basic urban grid is loosely defined. As the city densifies, government aid is present, but the reclamation of public space is increasingly difficult, underscoring a chronic issue within these environments.

5 Ways to Create More Liveable Cities: Insights from TV Show "Tale of Two Cities" with Dikshu Kukreja

Suneet Zishan Langar & Sadhya Bhatnagar — Thu, 26 Oct 2023 03:30:00 +0000

Cities are the bedrock of civilization. For millennia, they have attracted people with the promise of superior standards of living — from better economic and educational opportunities to easier access to quality public infrastructure such as housing, healthcare, and public transport. Today, however, many cities around the world are finding it challenging to live up to this promise. With urban migration accelerating at a dizzying rate – the United Nations projects that over two-thirds of the world's population will live in cities or urban centers by 2050 – existing resources and services in cities are coming under increasing pressure, rendering them dysfunctional and leading to glaring inequities.

Alsar Atelier: "We Explore new Forms of Public Architecture Adaptable to Chronic Emergency Situations"

Fabian Dejtiar — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 05:00:00 +0000

Alsar Atelier, led by Alejandro Saldarriaga, is an architecture and design studio based in Boston and Bogotá. Their practice focuses on the planning and creation of public facilities with an emphasis on social benefit, as well as small-scale residential projects. The studio employs a design approach that prioritizes the use of sustainable materials, cost-effective strategies, and active community collaboration.

Architecture Classics: Ciudadela Colsubsidio / Germán Samper

Dan Gamboa Bohorquez — Mon, 18 Sep 2023 05:00:00 +0000

In the western part of Bogotá, between Calle 80 and the Juan Amarillo Wetland, lies one of the most interesting urban and architectural projects in the history of Colombia: the Ciudadela Colsubsidio. Created in 1983 as a response to Law 21 of 1982, which required social security organizations to provide housing for their members. Colsubsidio, the project manager, hired Germán Samper to tackle a 130-hectare plot located between two well-established neighborhoods (Santa Bárbara and Bolivia). The challenge was to connect these neighborhoods while creating a citadel that would consolidate various essential services for a population that, due to its geographical location, was distant from the center of Bogotá.

Architecture Classics: Julio Mario Santo Domingo Cultural Center / Bermúdez Arquitectos

ArchDaily Team — Thu, 31 Aug 2023 04:00:00 +0000

The intervention project includes the design of the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Cultural Center and Public Library, as well as the 6-hectare San José de Bavaria recreational park. With its completion, a new recreational and cultural hub was established for the Suba area and the city.