Casa-Taller 8 BCH 2018 - Yemail Arquitectura

Project Details

Workshop-House 8 BCH 2018

DESCRIPTION

Finalist selected project at the XXVII Colombian Architecture and Design Biennial

Historical Context

1938 was a historic year for Bogotá, marked by the celebration of the fourth centenary of the city’s founding. The occasion prompted a series of major infrastructure projects, including the construction of the Vitelma Aqueduct, the first section of Avenida Jiménez, and the opening of the Nemesio Camacho “El Campín” Stadium for the Bolivarian Games. The BCH neighbourhood was developed as part of a broader package of urban works planned from 1935 under the District Planning Office, then directed by renowned Austrian urban planner Karl Brunner, designer of neighbourhoods such as La Soledad, Bosque Izquierdo, and Palermo in Bogotá, and Laureles in Medellín. Brunner’s urban layouts are characterized by radial street patterns crossed by diagonal axes connecting parks, plazas, and generously planted linear corridors.

Cuellar Serrano Gomez

The housing models for the BCH neighbourhood were designed by the Bogotá-based firm Cuellar Serrano Gómez, one of the leading practices of Colombia’s modern movement and authors of projects such as El Dorado Airport, San Carlos Hospital, the Ecopetrol Building, and the CAD, among others.

The design was led by Gabriel Serrano Camargo (1909–1982), who proposed a two-story middle-class housing model with a front garden and rear patio. Through restrained gestures and simple volumes, Serrano—then only 28 years old—began a transition toward the modern language he would develop more fully during the 1940s in projects such as his own residence and the collective housing development Cité Restrepo. This marked a contrast with his previous four years of experience in the office of Cassanovas and Manhein, architects known for English-style Tudor houses in La Merced, Teusaquillo, and Quinta Camacho. These bourgeois neighbourhoods reflected the aspirations of Bogotá’s elite to move away from Spanish colonial models and embrace an idea of progress more closely associated with England. Architecturally, these houses were characterized by steeply pitched Dutch-tile roofs, exposed brick, and refined masonry details around windows and chimneys—elements that would later become fundamental values within Colombian modern architecture.

El proyecto de vivienda

Houses were conceived within the Garden City model as a sequence of semi-detached dwellings sharing an entrance courtyard. This space provided generous natural light while creating a transition between the house and the street. This typology was part of a broader transformation of the colonial housing model and was fundamental in introducing new notions of privacy and domestic intimacy. Spaces no longer revolved around a central courtyard, while the idea of comfort became increasingly specialized through the inclusion of living rooms, studies, closets, and larger bathrooms within the house rather than relegating service spaces to the rear patio.

The project was built with solid rendered brick walls, continuous masonry sills, timber roof structures, and clay tiles. In the original scheme, the first floor contained the social areas, while the second floor housed three bedrooms and one bathroom. Along the lateral setback, the house included a single-story annex for storage and a garage, which over time enabled the expansion and subdivision of the property. In 1957, architect Alfredo Azcuénaga was commissioned to design an additional apartment using the formal language and finishes of the period, including a washed-granite façade, stone trim around the main entrance, ornamental metalwork, and concrete eaves.

The housing project – 2016 Reform

In 2016, what would become the third major intervention in the house began. The proposal sought to restore the rear courtyard, introduce gardens at the entrance, and subdivide the property into three independent functional units: an office on the ground floor arranged around the interior courtyard, a residence directly above it with access to the roof, and an adjoining apartment distributed across three levels.

La Oficina

The office occupies the ground floor, where the influence of modernism is most evident and the atmosphere becomes more “pop”: bright, luminous, and filled with windows and skylights of different types that seek out natural light and visually connect the spaces. The interior garden, visible from throughout the office, contains a small native forest with a Yarumo tree at its center, surrounded by a Siete Cueros, a Mano de Oso, an Amarraboyos, and a Palma Boba.

La vivienda

Upstairs, walls were removed to create a continuous space integrating two living rooms, the kitchen, and the dining area. Exposed brick, the remarkable height of the rooms, the original timber beams left visible, the pavilion containing the service areas, and the terrace overlooking the interior garden create an open space in which the eye can wander across layers of detail.

The bedroom is austere and monastic, with references to Barragán and Siza. A triangular window breaks the horizontal composition and becomes a space in itself. From the bathroom, much like in a Parisian attic, a steep staircase leads to a secret rooftop garden.

On the second floor, the strategy centered on the pursuit of comfort, producing intimate, warm, enclosed spaces shaped by the rustic character of raw materials and by a softer light that, unlike the brightness of the ground floor, is deliberately subdued.

DETAILS

Use

Housing – Office – Rental

Type

Rehabilitation of a 1938 house

Area

298 m²

Location

Bogotá D. C. – Colombia

Meters above the sea level

2625

Average annual temperature

13.1 °C

Year

2018

Design

Cuellar Serrano Gomez (1938)
Yemail Architecture (2017)

Construction

Carlos Picon

Structural design

Pedro Gonzalez

Project team

Antonio Yemail + Juan Camilo Anzola + Juan Sebastian Velez + Juliana Zambrano

Furniture Design

Antonio Yemail

Landscape Design

Victoria Sistema Natural

Architectural Model

Sara Escobar Aristizabal

Photo Credits

Alejandro Arango

Acknowledgements

Christiaan Job Nieman + Sebastián Contreras + Manuel Villa, + Juliana Zambrano + Natalia Carrero + Carlos Niño + Carlos Hernandez

Categories: 2.2 Urban, Housing