Red de Infraestructura Cultural Comunitaria - Palomino 2013-2016

Project Details

Net of Cultural Community Infrastructure – Palomino 2013-2016

DESCRIPTION

2012 First Prize, Ibero-American Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism – Palomino: Society Under Construction (Cádiz, Spain)

2012 First Prize, Karl Brunner Award for Urban and Landscape Design, 23rd Colombian Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism – Palomino: Society Under Construction (Armenia, Colombia)

2012 First International Mention, Social Habitat and Development Category, Pan-American Architecture Biennial of Quito (Quito, Ecuador)

2013 Shenzhen Design Award for Young Talents – UNESCO Creative City of Design (Shenzhen, China)

Taking the municipality of Palomino, in La Guajira, as a specific case study, the project proposes the development and reconstruction of the social fabric of this small town on Colombia’s Caribbean coast through a series of actions and built design prototypes informed by the collective intelligence identified within the community. Over the previous two years, the PEI International Studies Program and the New Territories Project of the Faculty of Architecture and Design at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá had been developing a series of significant processes of social innovation and transformation of urban space in this small town. In doing so, they sought to generate real and replicable proposals for more than 1,200 municipalities across the country that face similar conditions.

Through interdisciplinary and collaborative work, the project aims to propose alternatives that contribute to improving the quality of life of vulnerable populations, while fostering education and respect for cultural diversity and the environment.

The process of research, design, and collective construction has unfolded over time with different groups of students, professors, and invited participants, generating a network of contacts, collaborations, and support at both national and international levels.

Throughout the process, the project has considered the historical, economic, political, social, ecological, and cultural conditions specific to the context, gradually assembling the necessary elements to compare Palomino’s patterns of settlement and occupation with those of other regions in Colombia.

As with any research process, this work has several limitations that we consider important to make explicit, especially given that it is an academic project developed with students working under limited conditions of knowledge, time, and resources. The effort has therefore focused on applying a methodology that allows them to understand the importance of history and geography, and encourages them to situate their work within a broader and more compelling socio-cultural context. For this reason, the historical analysis of territorial occupation is neither exhaustive nor fully precise. Rather, it establishes general guidelines across the long duration of five centuries of settlement, beginning with the founding of towns and cities in this part of the country.

We have also considered it necessary, particularly in this book, to give greater importance to the graphic representation of analytical processes and completed projects. If this work claims any originality or contribution to architectural and design knowledge, it lies precisely in the cartographies, mappings, and infographics produced. For that reason, priority has been given to mapping information rather than to extensive written text.

The value of this book does not lie in exhausting a field of knowledge, but rather in the potential and motivation it may be able to generate. The intention is therefore to continue exploring the infinite particularities of this fascinating phenomenon: the design and construction of new territories.

New Territories

The New Territories Project is an experimental, transversal, and boundary-crossing academic platform that has gradually consolidated around a specific area of the country: the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. Through this focus, it has generated research and knowledge around emerging systems and the informal occupation of territory.

Within the New Territories Project, Palomino is understood as an urban settlement system located within a highly vulnerable and delicate emerging territory, requiring both analysis and a series of specific interventions. Thousands of settlements throughout Colombia exist under similar conditions, developing without formal planning and gradually consolidating over time into established realities, often generating major difficulties in achieving balanced relationships with pre-existing ecosystems and cultures. However, given the abandonment of these territories by the state and public institutions, and the fact that informal settlements often become centers of inequality and social exclusion, we consider it necessary to develop intelligent and practical architectural and design responses to the quality-of-life challenges faced by their inhabitants. For this reason, the work presented here is conceived as a model with the potential to be applied elsewhere across Colombia.

The strategy developed so far has consisted of approaching the problems of a territory, a town, and a community through an atemporal, multiscalar, and non-linear methodology. This means that the New Territories Project is not governed by conventional research systems or by standard academic timeframes such as the semester. Instead, it is built progressively over time, across different semesters and with different groups of students and professors. The objectives, scope, and research therefore adapt and transform over time while always following a process that moves from territory to detail: from geography, cartography, and an understanding of the physical, social, and cultural landscape to specific architectural and design proposals intended to address problems identified within the community or within individual families. This has required the construction and development of projects at full scale, 1:1. This condition explains not only the purpose of the research, but also its methodology and the kind of information produced within a non-linear working process. In other words, the project proposes a design-based and prospective form of research framed by the complexity of the emerging systems involved in its development.

DETAILS

Use

Reconstruction of Social Fabric

Type

Prototypes

Location

Palomino, La Guajira – Colombia

Meters above the sea level

Average annual temperature

24 °C

Client

Community of Palomino, La Guajira

Design

Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Faculty of Architecture and Design, Bogotá

Construction

Carlos Hernández Correa + PEI Professors: Antonio Yemail Cortés, Christiaan Job Neiman, Santiago Pradilla Hossie, Daniel Feldman Mowerman + Zuluar y Zuluaga

Year

2013-2016

Project team

Carlos Hernández Correa + PEI Teachers: Antonio Yemail Cortes, Christiaan Job Neiman, Santiago Pradilla Hossie, Daniel Feldman Mowerman + Guest Teachers: Colectivo Zuloark – Manuel Pascual, Juan Chacón.

Technical Team

Collective Mtin + Students of Architecture and design group PEI

Photo Credits

Juan Chacón

Categories: 4.1 Infrastructure, City