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A New Building That Already Exists. Recycling School In Bogotá

Part 2 Project 2001
Jean Pierre Bolivar
National University of Colombia - Bogotá campus | Colombia
The proposal is to be located in a deteriorated area of the city, part of the historical center, it has an important urban infrastructure (public transportation and public spaces) this has been a starting point for the new developing plans. In this area diverse scenarios exist where important activities concerning recycling have been the means of economical resources for a large population.

The school outlines a bigger and better recognition of this cultural fact as an important part of the contemporary urban life.

The project takes its form starting from the structure of an abandoned commercial center. In that unfinished architecture a aesthetic qualities is recognized, (The esthetic value of the columns, the Renaissance space modulation and the technique of the armed concrete used in the modernity.)

The position:
- It maintains intact the qualities of the pre-existing architecture.

- It defines new limits that allow to appropriation of the spaces by the school

The result is a building in which the new architecture and the previous one coexist. A building that stimulates the communication, between the school and the city, endowing new meanings to spaces and objects that other way wouldn’t have any utility.

Jean Pierre Bolivar


The project:
“recycling school” in Bogotá in a deteriorated area of the city.

The program:
Classrooms, workshops, auditorium, administrative spaces, parking spaces, and exhibition plaza.

The site:
The abandoned structure of an unfinished shopping mall.

The architecture:
The materials involved within the process of recycling, the pre-existing distribution of the old project (shopping mall’s structure),and the spatial qualities found in the unfinishised building, shape the architecture. By doing so the building itself becomes a “recycling project”; its shape changes trough time with the addition of new materials and new experiences, The program is a support for future mutations.

Character of the project:
Recycling has been an activity associated with an economically depressed social group and usually takes place in decaying sectors of the contemporary metropolises.
The clues to understand this proposal are: the sense of dignity given to this activity by the educational processes (which justifies the establishing of a school dedicated to it), the architectural readings that exists in a condemned building and “recycling “as a creative process (the building reveals its own morphology and significance trough its completion).
Jean Pierre Bolivar’s keen eye sees a better city within the overlooked structure, and by the delicate process of “listening” the whispers of the contemporary ruin, comes forth with a very vigorous outlook for the future urban reality.

2001
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