Pabellón Colombia: Feria del Libro de Santa Cruz - Bolivia 2024

Project Details

Colombia Pavilion: Santa Cruz Book Fair – Bolivia 2024

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DESCRIPTION

No matter how small a national pavilion may seem, it is the reproduction of one territory within another. At the 2024 Santa Cruz Book Fair, Bolivia, we built a shed of fiction that narrates the story of how natural interdependencies embody life, memory, and the craft of building. Like two fragments coexisting within an extended narrative timeframe, the pavilion brings together the “Colombia: Possible Stories” bookstore and the “Vorágine: 100 Years” exhibition: two moments that offer reminiscent of landscapes through a deeply personal interpretation.

In the first, a hut set amidst columns that branch out in a choreography expressed across two scales: on the horizon, the image of a thicket, and close at hand, the shelter of a texture crafted from book covers.

La fragilidad aparente de esta estructura esconde un profundo sentido de agenciamiento y cooperación. Este pabellón forma parte de una investigación más amplia sobre la extensión de la vida útil de arquitecturas temporales. Esto significa que entiende lo proyectual como un episodio cultural con un alcances ecológicos y sociales. En Santa Cruz, colaboramos con el centro cultural del barrio La Morita para transformar las estructuras en ludoteca y sala de lectura.

The second moment is an exercise in appropriation: taking over the corridor, covering it, and transforming it. Architecture expands itself to turn a mere passageway into a space for encounter. A passage becomes a place where the movement is interwoven with the contemplation of La Vorágine in various formats.

Fragments of oblique planes, machine-like structures, and wooden animals that invite step and listening. This assembly of vertical and horizontal forms a “living laboratory” where architecture engages in a dialogue with tradition on its own terms, finding its purpose in the visitor’s experience.

In the end, the hypothesis regarding lightweight portability and demountability is confirmed in its second life: the structure is reborn at the Búho Blanco cultural space in Santa Cruz.

Building is all about an action that emphasizes the blending inherent in any project. As a craft, it follows the logic of gathering and bringing together diverse materials, but also of people, institutions or teams.
In Bolivia, the collaboration with local firms: Bernarda Aparicio Arquitectura, Carmen Aparicio Arquitectura, and Diego Collazos Gottret was fundamental, as was the work of local artisans and the institutions that received the transformed architecture. At the end, a continuous material cycle is also an exercise in collective memory.

Thanks to the Colombian Ministry of Culture, the National Library of Colombia, Piedra Tijera Papel, and Relámpago for the exhibition and production by Paula Londoño. To Jimmi Palacio and the entire Yemail Architecture team.

DETAILS

Use

Pavilion

Duration

12 days

Attendees

125,000

Second life

Adapted furniture: Donation to the Morita Library, facilities such as a playroom with puppet theater and reading room at the Búho Blanco cultural space in Santa Cruz.

Area

48 m²

Location

Santa Cruz de la Sierra – Bolivia

Meters above sea level

416 m

Year

2024

Client

Ministry of Cultures, Arts, and Knowledge

Design

Yemail Architecture

Project team

Antonio Yemail + Jimmi Palacio

Graphics

Project Relámpago

Local partners

Diego Collazos + Maria Bernarda Aparicio + Carmen Maria Aparicio

Photography

Lucia Lugones + Maria Bernarda Aparicio

Categories: 1.1 Pavilions, Culture