- Year: 2009
Text description provided by the architects. The Project was the winner of an architectural contest. The site is La Gata Golosa at the highest part of the University in the boundaries between the city and the mountain in Bogotá, Colombia at a place of wonderful natural conditions next to los Cerros de Monserrate y Guadalupe, an emblematic pair of mountains with a Church and a Statue of la Virgen de Guadalupe. The city regulations were very strict in terms of site occupation, letting the project only 5% of the hole lot to be occupied. That implied having sport activities one on top of the other in particular the pool and the multifunctional covered courts.
The building is a group of 6 architectural pieces set together in a way that the mountains, the city and the sky are involved in the project as part of the limits of the space. The strategy also permits that each activity is seen by the others, in a transparent building designed to practice sports but also to see practice sports, making architecture to help encourage students to get involves with what it offers.
The limits of the spaces inside or outside are undefined, and the multi optional ways of moving inside the building makes the experience a multi choice emotional and very Bogotanian architectural tour.
The high level of transparency of the architectural pieces lest the light and the sight go through the volumes, letting the site get inside the project.
From the technical point of view the architectural design resolves the strong position of putting the water in the air above the main court by making four elephant feet in concrete attached by a metal structure as shown in the graphics, in a high risk earthquake zone.
