Photographer: Andrés Valbuena | ArchDaily

Houses in Colombia: Shade, Ventilation, and Nature

Santiago Baraya — Mon, 15 Mar 2021 05:00:00 +0000

For houses throughout the world, the barriers between the inside and outside of houses are solid and well-defined, allowing the spaces within the home to be protected from the weather conditions outside and made comfortable for the inhabitants inside. In countries like Colombia, which sit close to the equator and enjoy a warm, subtropical climate, temperatures average just above ideal thermal comfort.

Mon Paradis House / Colectivo Creativo Arquitectos

Andreas Luco — Sat, 19 Dec 2020 17:00:00 +0000

VIMOB Mon Paradis resides under the veil of the monumental saman trees of the Corregimiento de Rozo – Valle del Cauca. A dwelling that cherishes the magical sunsets of the Cauca Valley, those of which Jorge Isaacs detailed in his novel María as “clouds of violet and the glow of pale gold.” This residence is designed under the concept of a circular economy and developed in an industrialized manner. Encapsulating the principles that guide the Colectivo Creativo Studio, ones that bet on efficient construction processes, drawn from the meticulous development of its modulation and the materials that coalesce with harmony and austerity in the environment where it resides, transforming these places into habitable landscapes. The project began upon the discovery of this exceptional terrain by the architect and the client.

Rethinking Embassy Design: Building Diplomacy Around the World

Eric Baldwin — Thu, 15 Oct 2020 07:35:00 +0000

The architecture of diplomacy balances security and openness. As symbols of protection and representation, embassies are built for utility in both urban and rural contexts alike. At their core, they are also made to communicate the values and ideals of nations as welcoming structures and sustainable civic spaces. Today, modern embassy projects are made to meet rigorous security standards while embracing local culture and conditions.

VO House / BAQUERIZO Arquitectos

Andreas Luco — Wed, 09 Sep 2020 17:00:00 +0000

Fire and water. This house is a weekend home located in a country complex near Villeta, Cundinamarca. It is located on a sloping lot overlooking the valley of the rivers Villeta and Tobia. In addition to the specific determinants of the terrain for this project, there were two important factors for the owners: that the house would be distributed on one floor, keeping the elderly of the family in mind, and that it could house five families in five rooms. The house was decided to be implanted on the highest part of the lot on an avenue that extends along the contour lines. The house is developed in a longitudinal scheme, transversal to the slope of the land.

Brick in Latin American Architecture: Hospitals and Health Centers

Santiago Baraya — Fri, 07 Aug 2020 05:00:00 +0000

The focus of buildings should ultimately be the well-being of the people using them. When we think of our experiences in hospitals, clinics, the dentist's office, and other medical facilities, the feeling is rarely pleasant. Perhaps it's the smells, the dull, monotone colors, or the sound of medical gadgets working away on some unlucky patient.

Ventilation and Shade: Permeable Walls in Colombian Architecture

Santiago Baraya — Sun, 14 Jun 2020 04:00:00 +0000

In countries where architecture adapts to the seasons, projects must respond so that they are comfortable for the users, both in the hot summer temperatures and in the cold winter. Tropical countries, such as Colombia, are a bit luckier. The temperature of construction sites depends less on the seasons and more on where they are located geographically according to the altitude above sea level; the closer they are to the sea, the warmer it is. For this reason, it is not essential to seal or insulate the interior spaces. On the contrary, the good management of constant ventilation creates a more permeable and contextual architecture.

11 Colombian Houses That Feature Exposed Brick

Santiago Baraya — Wed, 20 May 2020 11:00:00 +0000

Brick is one of the most widely used materials in Colombia, making the architectural designs in its capital city, Bogotá, stand out worldwide. Due to the excellent quality of the clay found in some regions of the country, brick is used in all aspects of construction, from adobe floor slabs to exterior facades.

Fusca House / BAQUERIZO Arquitectos

Rayen Sagredo — Thu, 05 Dec 2019 14:00:00 +0000

The project consists of a 600 m2 residence for a family of five who sought the tranquillity of the countryside and a nice garden with a view. The place is located in a rural urbanization in the north-eastern hills of Bogotá and Chía, in Cundinamarca, Colombia. It is a lot with an inclination of approximately 30 degrees and has a size of 3879 m2 surrounded by native forest with a predominant view towards the west over a savannah.

Usaquén Urban Wetland / CESB / Obraestudio

Pilar Caballero — Mon, 04 Mar 2019 13:00:00 +0000

Obraestudio was awarded first prize in the open national design competition for the exterior platform of the Santa Barbara business center. The competition was sponsored by The Colombian Architects Society. The 8,500 sq. meter landscape transformation aims to revitalize the common access space to the Torres Unidas Building, Scotia Bank, Samsung, AR and W Hotel towers, an emblematic public space corner of northeastern Bogotá.

Ekiraya School / Alejandro Uribe Cala

Cristobal Rojas — Wed, 14 Mar 2018 14:00:00 +0000

The Ekiraya Montessori school grew out of the confidence of a parent group in its educational system and today is growing at the time as children.

Bavaria Brewery Tocancipá Headquarters Expansion / Construcciones Planificadas

Igor Fracalossi — Fri, 02 Feb 2018 17:00:00 +0000

The expansion of the headquarters through several buildings is an acupuncture of functional and architectural commissions, in order to expand the production capacity of the main brewery plant in the country.

Ágora-Bogotá / Estudio Herreros + Bermúdez Arquitectos

Rayen Sagredo — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 15:00:00 +0000

ÁGORA-BOGOTÁ will not just be like any convention centre used by sporadic visitors who have little contact with the city, but aims to ascend to the category of a public building infused into all citizens’ imagination. Therefore, all efforts have been concentrated on meeting collective as well as specialized demands. First and foremost, it offers an image which represents the aspirations of a society in transformation and that resembles an environmental sensitivity which inscribes the building in today’s concerns. The specialized demands focus on practical aspects such as circulation systems, easy and comprehensible; an invisible but hierarchical and interconnected distribution of all the internal services that embodies the logistics’ scheme of the building; and a concept of flexibility that accepts the programming of very diverse formats. To this end, the project has adopted two innovative solutions: first, articulating the logistic scheme on the basis of four large vertical circulation and services cores, one in each corner, to facilitate and accommodate the most varied programs; and, second, dispensing with the conventional auditorium’s inclined floors and fixed seating in order to visualize ÁGORA-BOGOTÁ as a place of encounters and activities as diverse as anything and everything the imagination of its events organizers is capable of generating.

Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá / El Equipo Mazzanti

Rayen Sagredo — Thu, 20 Jul 2017 11:00:00 +0000

A healing space

Ciudadela 29 de Julio Park / El Equipo Mazzanti + AEV Arquitectos

Cristobal Rojas — Thu, 13 Apr 2017 11:00:00 +0000

Ciudadela 29 de Julio Park is part of a 9 centralities network within the Rehabilitation and Public Space Plan of Rio Manzanares waterfront in Santa Marta, Colombia. It looks forward to the hydrologic system of the city as well of its visualization and accessibility. Santa Marta has grown forming a lot of neighborhoods, most of them defined by invisible limits which has transcended in the belonging sense from the inhabitants. The project has been planned as a series of leisure and recreational spaces were the existence of physical and social limits are cloudy and the space can turn visible, clear and behaves as a central axis of the city, working as a sequence of central places for the community activities and meeting.

Ground Control: How Concrete Reshapes Our Relationship to the Earth

Rory Stott — Wed, 28 Oct 2015 09:30:00 +0000

Concrete has long had a close relationship with the earth; as the favorite material for the creation of building foundations, one of its most common uses is effectively as a more reliable replacement for soil. In the twentieth century, concrete’s ability to transform our interaction with the ground was taken to the next step. As architects and engineers explored the opportunities offered by a combination of reinforced concrete and the modernist mindset, multiple attempts were made to replace the ground in a more dramatic way: by creating a new ground, separated from the earth itself. Most widespread among these plans was the engineer’s elevated highway which emerged worldwide, and the most relevant to architects the “streets in the sky” embodied by developments such as the Smithsons’ Robin Hood Gardens. Newcastle-upon-Tyne offers a city-wide example of this theory, embarking on an ambitious plan to become the “Brasilia of the North” by creating an elevated network of pedestrian routes entirely separated from the automobiles below - though the project was abandoned in the 1970s with only small sections implemented.

Click Clack Hotel / Plan B Arquitectos

Igor Fracalossi — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

01. Restrictions:

Santa María de los Caballeros Chapel / MGP Arquitectura y Urbanismo

Igor Fracalossi — Thu, 17 Jul 2014 01:00:00 +0000

A Catholic temple is essentially a place to achieve communication between the Divine and the Human. The chapel for the Gimnasio Campestre and its surrounding community, is a building that spatially expresses this contact that results from producing a levitating deck, the divine, on an undermined space, the human, so that the temple is just the compressed space in tension between the two parts. When occupied the user comprehends the earthly and the spiritual condition of humans and the space acquires its sacred character without superficial gadgets. The temple is then generated by the contact between the two parts, and its physical understanding is an act of faith.

Embassy of Ecuador / Arquiteck & Asociados

Igor Fracalossi — Tue, 24 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The building for the Embassy of the Republic of Ecuador in Colombia aims to provide through the architecture an image capable of expressing new diplomatic relations between the two countries. The project arises at a time of a change in the political tide, sponsored by the new Colombian government. The architectural proposal is developed on a corner plot of 680m2 previously occupied by a house in the 1980s, in which the Embassy worked until it was moved to make way for the new construction.