WALLS: Resignifying vestiges

University of los Andes, Bogotá Colombia, Faculty of architecture and design

Project idea

Santa Bárbara is a neighborhood located on the Santa Bárbara hill in Sogamoso, Boyacá. It is characterized by being an urban-rural edge and by hosting important landmarks for the city, such as the old aqueduct system. Over the years, Santa Bárbara was consumed by neglect, becoming a haven for insecurity, violence, inequality, and substance abuse. A few years ago, the community came together to fight against all the issues affecting this historic place. As a result, today Santa Bárbara is being revived thanks to the work of its residents. However, despite the efforts of its inhabitants, Santa Bárbara continues to be stigmatized by violence. This is why this project seeks solutions to address the various social, environmental, and economic responsibilities.

Project description

Santa Bárbara is a neighborhood located on the Santa Bárbara hill in Sogamoso, Boyacá. It is characterized by being an urban-rural edge and by hosting important landmarks for the city, such as the old aqueduct system. Over the years, Santa Bárbara was consumed by neglect, becoming a haven for insecurity, violence, inequality, and substance abuse. A few years ago, the community came together to fight against all the issues affecting this historic place. As a result, today Santa Bárbara is being revived thanks to the work of its residents. However, despite the efforts of its inhabitants, Santa Bárbara continues to be stigmatized by violence. This is why this project seeks solutions to address the various social, environmental, and economic responsibilities.

WALLS: Re-signifying Vestiges begins by understanding the history, comprehending each of the historical elements that the site still retains. The vestiges in Santa Bárbara are considered as the "third landscape"—a territory that was once used and exploited but has now been abandoned. This third landscape is the ruin, the aqueduct system that, at its peak, supplied water to Sogamoso from Monguí. Today, this aqueduct is no longer in use, leaving behind the traces of its infrastructure to remind us that, once, Santa Bárbara was a source of living water.
Thus, the project is based on the parameterization of walls, understanding the tanks of the old aqueduct system as pre-existing elements that can function as a 4x1 and 1x4 system, where the vestige can be seen as a unit with its own program or collectively, giving rise to different systems.
The first system developed is the water system. This aims to restore the ecosystem by reactivating the aqueduct: the first tank will extract groundwater to enter the system and move to tank 2. There, it will be treated through natural filters and slowed down; then it will move to tank 3 for further treatment and storage and, finally, reach the fourth tank for infiltration into aquifers. The remaining water will recharge the river that will form in the floodable area around the aqueduct system.
The second system is the economic system. The first tank will handle raw materials, with crops. The second tank is for production and will have a gender and differential focus. The first level will focus on care work; the second level will be educational, and the third level will involve paid work. This tank will serve single mothers and elderly individuals without pension or dignified employment. The third tank is for commercialization, featuring temporary exhibitions and galleries to display products produced in the previous tanks. The final tank is for exhibition, functioning as a vertical theater for cultural events, community meetings, and trade fair exhibitions.
The last system is the solar system, which, due to the configuration and parameterization of the facade perforations, will have a special light effect on certain dates throughout the year in each of the tanks. Therefore, temporality is crucial to the project. The first tank will host a special light event on July 17, during the sun and steel festivities. The second on August 7, in commemoration of the Battle of Boyacá Bridge. The third on September 6, in celebration of when Sogamoso was recognized as a republican town. The fourth on December 21, during the winter solstice. Temporality will modify the facade, as it is expected that over time, the perforations will become habitats for various forms of life. This will transform the wall into a living wall that, through the facade configuration and the developing vegetation, will create a vast matrix of operational transversalities, allowing spaces and experiences to vary.
This is how WALLS: Resignifying Vestiges responds to the social, environmental, cultural, and economic needs of Santa Bárbara.

Technical information

The wall is the fundamental structural element of the project, composed of reinforced concrete. The wall represents the preexistence, the origin of the composition of memory. The vestiges found on the site are weathered concrete walls that have taken on different forms of life, revealing the traces of what happened in that place. Therefore, the project is built upon walls that express boundaries, that thin line that thickens, fragments, and perforates. This element shapes the facade of each of the tanks that make up the aqueduct system. Reinforced concrete allows the perforations made to be structural, so the parametric configuration of the pattern of perforations never hinders its load-bearing capacity. Additionally, these perforations have different arrangements and inclinations that not only align with the activities of each space but also enable lighting events on special dates. Furthermore, in order to give prominence to the vestiges, the new walls feature a slight setback at ground level, creating a visual effect of separating from the ground to frame the preexistences. It is expected that, over time, these walls will wear down, and their perforations will function as habitats for different forms of life, thereby creating a dichotomy between the urban and the natural. This will allow light, its reflection in the water, wind, and the shadows generated by the configuration of the facade to constantly change the project's experience. Additionally, the interior spaces have metal beams of varying sections that are anchored to the walls to provide structural support for the floors and allow for open and flexible spaces for various spatial configurations.

Documentation

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