Urban notes. The project seeks to consolidate a single architectural entity: an austere, clear and recognisable volume, able to last and to offer versatility. Its organisation allows key areas to be made independent for community use, such as the classroom precinct, given over to learning. Taking advantage of a privileged location, the design strengthens the relationships the site suggests. Three zones are defined: singular buildings to the north, a sports centre to the south and the classroom building as the central axis. This arrangement values the residential surroundings and proposes a cross connection between Transversal 70D and the inner park of the neighbourhood.

Architectural notes. The building answers a forward-looking educational vision, aimed at placing state education at the highest pedagogical level. Its central idea turns on the “production of knowledge”. Like a factory, the complex organises spaces that are open yet integrated, where theatre, multi-purpose room and library work independently and in concert. The classroom building is set out as the formative core. Its classrooms are arranged around green courtyards, recalling the traditional city blocks with gardens inside them. Each stage of education is conceived as a collective unit which, through this pairing of classroom and courtyard, produces a learning environment that is both autonomous and integrated.

The museum is conceived as public cultural infrastructure that turns a street corner into shared space. It sits between Punta Pacífica, a dense high-rise district, and Boca La Caja, a traditional fishing neighbourhood, and acts as a threshold between the two: it does not divide them, it connects them.

The 3-metre difference between the two street levels of the site is what generates the project. At street level, shops activate the perimeter and keep the pavement continuous. Above them, a raised public platform brings together the atrium-square, the shop, the café, the auditorium and the workshops, and works even when the galleries are closed.

The project for the new home of the SENA Centro de Formación en Actividad Física y Cultura (CFAFC) in Kennedy, Bogotá, starts from two premises: a clear organisation of the brief and a precise reading of the urban context. The brief is grouped into four main components: sports, cultural, teaching and administrative areas. These uses, with different acoustic and spatial requirements, are stacked vertically in a twelve-storey tower with an efficient layout.

The building is structured around a central core of vertical circulation and services, which guarantees a clear connection between the two side blocks: the left wing given over to sport and the right wing to teaching and administration. This arrangement keeps active and quiet uses from interfering with one another and improves the experience for users.

The project for the Casa de la Cultura at the ETCR Jaime Pardo Leal (one of the settlements created under the 2016 peace agreement for the reincorporation of former combatants) starts from a double commitment: to establish a reciprocal relationship between the community and its cultural institutions, and to consolidate a place that gives dignity to its identity in a territory marked by complex relationships between culture, society and nature.

The proposal shapes a park that ties together the existing buildings (the school, the library and the cultural centre) along with the self-managed infrastructure of the settlement (water tanks, a wind turbine, solar panels), connected by a network of public space and landscape routes among trees and crops. Local stone is used, giving value to the characteristic landscape of the upper Guiana Shield.

The proposal for CEFE Tunal (CEFE is short for Centro Felicidad, Spanish for “happiness centre”) starts from a clear premise: to insert architecture without subtracting nature. The building emerges from the park and extends the green space onto its roof, turning it into a public viewpoint over the mountains and the city.

The volume defines an active urban frontage, opening two controlled entrances that connect with an internal pedestrian street. This public corridor works as an open foyer for the cultural and sporting activities, extending the life of the park into the building.

The project for the Teatro Conto Ferrer in Quibdó answers the need to replace a theatre in poor condition, proposing a new building that is open, flexible and fitted to local cultural life. The proposal imagines a space beyond the traditional theatre: a living community centre, where the ground floor is set out as a covered square open to everyday use. This space works as a foyer, but also as a gallery, a rehearsal room, a meeting point or a public forum.

The main auditorium was conceived as a transformable stage box. Its configuration adapts to different uses: end-stage theatre, cinema, lecture hall, arena, catwalk or experimental space. This widens what can be programmed and allows a range of expressions in a single room. The design puts versatility and continuous use of the building at its centre, thinking not only of what happens on stage but of how the space can fit into daily life in Quibdó. The architecture becomes a support for art, for living together and for urban life, open to being taken up by the people of the city.

The proposal is set out as a threshold between the linear park and the town: an active cultural edge, open and permeable. It is not a closed building but a structure that organises the relationships between the urban, the natural and the communal.

The architecture takes the form of a system of porticoes that gathers a range of spaces under a sheltered climate. This continuous colonnade allows flexible appropriation, connects the volumes of the brief and multiplies the possible uses: market, fair, stage or open gallery. Walls of rammed earth recall the local landscape and provide thermal mass. The passive strategy guarantees efficiency: cross ventilation, daylight, solar control and the use of local materials.

The UVA Orfelinato project (a UVA, or Unidad de Vida Articulada, is one of the small civic and recreational buildings built on the water-tank sites of Colombian cities) redefines what public architecture can be by proposing an infrastructure that not only serves practical purposes but builds a sensitive spatial experience. Through an architectural route connecting three main entrances, the design establishes a direct relationship with the topography, the daylight and what is already on the site, producing a sequence of immersion by means of cuts in the ground, shade and planting.

The proposal is organised from a hierarchical reading of the brief: auditoriums and classrooms as the backbone, with further ancillary spaces that allow community uses. Cultural and educational spaces are brought together with publicly accessible areas and interior ones, activating the place with uses such as ICT rooms, internet cafés and small local shops. This strengthens the social dimension of the project and reinforces its value as immersive public space.