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Architects: Taller Sintesis
- Area: 40 m²
- Year: 2018
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Photographs:Silvio Pereira
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Manufacturers: AutoDesk, Chaos Group, Adobe Systems Incorporated, Ajover, Argos, Ladrillera Santafé, Porveedor local, Trimble Navigation
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Lead Architects: Farhid Maya Ramírez, David Cuartas Restrepo
Text description provided by the architects. In the vicinity of the Montes de María, one of the areas most affected by violence in Colombia, the Fondo Acción, as part of its strategies to encourage environmental care by communities and sustainable production, has designed a plan to build a series of environmental classrooms to strengthen educational institutions in the area. The first of these environmental classrooms has been built in the village of Guayanes, in the municipality of Santa Rosa del Sur, Bolívar. It is a small building of forty square meters that complements the facilities of the existing school.
The proposed building is a shaded space, a large cover without divisions through which air freely flows, keeping the interior cool. A free space designed to be used all the time by both the students of the school and the community in general, even when its doors are closed, for this purpose, an open lobby has been provided for free use by the community. The building was also conceived as a large piece of furniture that encourages staying and meeting, its walls fold to create benches and niches both inside and outside, and its floor rises thirty centimeters above the natural ground, turning its entire perimeter into a large public seat.
The construction of this building has been planned according to the materials available on site, understanding the transportation problems in an area with no roads or connections, materials that are familiar to local labor and require little training, but also seeking to rescue the traditions in wood handling that reflect the local homes both inside and outside, thus the doors and windows of this small environmental classroom become a wooden fabric that allows the wind to pass through and filters the intense light of the area, also causing the interior of the space to be in continuous change through the shadows projected on the surfaces.
