How a school is designed, how an architecture competition works from the inside, and what changed in the rules and the standard documents that govern the procurement of social infrastructure. Written from four competition awards, not from theory.
A nursery is not a small school. Scale, safety without confinement, daylight, surfaces and the playground: what Colombia's official guidance and play-safety standards require, and why their figures do not match.
19 min
A school is not sized in square metres: it is sized in learning spaces, and the area is what comes out. What the Colombian school standard requires of the site, the daylight, the toilets and the escape routes.
14 min
Eighty pages and a single decision: bid or not. How standardised tender documents are assembled, in what order to read them, and where the conditions that disqualify you without showing it are hiding.
12 min
The areas per student did not move. What changed is where you get them from: the table that gave you the size of the site left the normative body, and the playground became programmed area.
22 min
You do not win with the best proposal: you win with the best proposal among those left eligible. How a concurso de méritos is put together, what is assessed, and why price does not decide who wins.
8 min
Supervision and interventoría are not the same thing, and the difference decides who is answerable. The regime that separates them, why interventoría is engaged through a concurso de méritos, and how far its liability reaches.
7 min
Schools, cultural centres, administrative offices and public space. It is where most of our work is, and where the studio’s four competition awards come from, three of them national public competitions.