Re-Thinking the Icon Icons formed by society and not by architects

Juan Alejo Morales Mor

The Barcelona Institute of Architecture BIArch

2011/2012 Barcelona, Catalonia

juanalejomoralesmor@hotmail.com

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1. Iconic Architecture as method for Urban Acupuncture 2. Urban Settlements

2.1 Urban Settlements, the case of Bogota & Medellin (Colombia)

3. The transformation of a city, study case Medellin 3.1 Marginality in Medellin

4. Beginnings of the urban transformation

4.1 Development Plans Background: PRIMED 4.2 Politics shaping architecture

5. Hands on Integral Urban Projects

5.1 Description

5.2 Policy Objectives

5.3 Implementation

5.4 Funding

6. Library Parks

6.1 Parque Biblioteca San Javier

6.2 Parque Biblioteca Leon de Greiff

6.3 Parque Biblioteca Tomas Carrasquilla

6.4 Parque Biblioteca Española

6.5 Parque Biblioteca Belen

6.6 Achievements of the Library Parks

7. Schools of Quality

7.1 Colegio Las Mercedes

7.2 Colegio Pajarito 7.3 Colegio Altavista 7.4 Colegio La Independencia 7.5 Colegio Hector Abad Faciolince

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7.6 Colegio Santo Domingo 7.7 Colegio Maestro Fernando Botero 7.8 Colegio Lara Bonilla

8. South American Games

8.1 Sports Complex for the South American Games

8.2 Water Scapes  

8.3 Orquideorama

9. Metro Cable – Social Catenary

10. CONCLUSIONS

11. BIBLIOGRAPHY

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1. Iconic Architecture as method for Urban Acupuncture "The icons in contemporary architecture are characterized by its expressive autonomy and disconnection from their context" – Josep Lluis Mateo The representative architecture plays a big role in the development of new cities and/or the redevelopment of them. It has to bring investments for the city and has to redefine the peoples image of a city; in the close future architecture will be (and by now is) only about the mediatic expression of itself; without the new ways of communication like Internet the architects role in the construction of a new world wouldn’t be important. The real future of an iconic building is based on both the virtuality of it and on the specialized media of mass communication (FE/ archdaily.com). In the changing universe of aesthetic trends, life cycles shorten as quickly as it raises the threshold of novelty. Shortening the periods of validity of a particular aesthetic trend is invariably subject to admission to the complex system of novelty; the major media will review the news of the last hour, only if it is novelty. This is an extremely dangerous double game, that makes apparently city architecture and its circulation but there is the recognition that you can also succumb or disappear like a firework on mediatic architecture. The search for an Icon or Emblem is not an exclusive preserve for the private European enterprise; Museums and Conventions Centers are the most emblematic buildings for the policy change regarding the cities. They are urban infrastructure and are not intended to be used by the city, but as differential elements in the rating tables in urban and business tourism potential of cities, this meaning, more incomes for the local governments leading us to a mark-itecture. Urban emblems need the name of a recognized architect by the media, because they constitute cultural news through its name, providing another kind of social impact and endorsing the news operation. Therefore, the effectiveness of investment and validation of the project lies in the choice of the architect. The choice of a renowned star-chitect (of abroad) increases the attractiveness of the media by the new project, building or investment. The transformation of enterprises with massive intrusion of the mass media has been the advent of the city, consumer of electronics and city telematics and so on. And this satisfies definitely the disappearance of their traditional roles. In recent years a massive spread of great iconic buildings is been shown on the internet, built by renowned architects, which do not limit their action to a city or a country, but they project and design for everyone, with the only singularity of the background image itself struck by the architect and therefore recognizable. Therefore, the city became the emblem, but not of herself or of political power and public, but the companies that shape it, from the skyline to the change of use and surface regulations for convenience of the investor and private developer. The primacy of private over public distorts and perverts the social relations of urban space use.

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The proposed architecture as a symbol becomes an icon and, therefore, an object, it also trivializes complexity, architecture also disappears, over needless to say, and also the architect may disappear. The inability to relate to the site roots and the urban interwoven with logic makes these sites a sum of objects, regardless of their architectural quality it alone can generate an easy-to-urban breakdown, to preclude their daily and domestic ownership. Without this there is no city ownership, but pure stenography vacuous. The icon is an architectural travesty empty and visually impressionistic, suggested in an authoritarian manner and sentenced to a limited contribution to the consolidated urban landscape of cities. Jaime Lerner, renowned urban planner and former Mayor of Curitiba, Brazil, coined the phrase "Urban Acupuncture" to refer to the transformative effect of these detonating (and in certain cases Iconic) projects. In his book 'urban acupuncture' the author talks about the problems of urbanism and society, on the ability societies have to transform spaces, on how to improve and renew the supports that make possible the retention of the cities. Lerner asks, "why certain cities get important and positive transformations ", to which he answers that "they led to a beginning, an awakening (...) a good acupuncture. A true urban acupuncture. " "I always dream and hope that with a needle it would be possible to cure diseases. The principle of recovering energy from a sick or tired patient by a simple puncture has to do with the revitalization of the point and the area around. I think we can and should implement some "Magic" medicine in the cities, because many are sick, some almost in terminal state. In the same way the medicine needs of the interaction between doctor and patient, also in urbanism is necessary to make the city react. Touching an area such that it can help to heal, improve, and create positive chain reactions. Action is needed to revitalize, make the body work otherwise it will be dead.”

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2. Urban Settlements Today, for the first time in history, more than 50% of the population lives in urban centers, and it is estimated that by 2050 this percentage will reach 75% (UN-Habitat, 2009). These data demonstrates conclusively how urbanization is an irreversible process, and how the city has become a high topic on the international political agenda. The urbanization process is necessarily linked to a land growing demand, utilities, housing and infrastructure, all elements put strong pressure on the local and international public institutions. For this reason, and the recurrent failure of under development countries governments to meet on this demand, that since the middle of the last century has been popping up a recurrent spontaneously alternative way to build the city, associated with the production of informal settlements. This type of settlements, are now a very common element and issue of our Latin cities, if you may think that in the world, one out of three people living at neighborhoods are currently informal (UN-Habitat, 2008). This while on one hand seeks to meet through mechanisms of self-management and self-construction the problem of accessibility to the city and in particular to quality housing, on their formation process presents some serious imbalances in physical, environmental and social fields. According to the operational definition of UN-Habitat (2007) an informal settlement is characterized by one or more of the following conditions: critical overcrowding, poor state of housing (in relation to its structure and their physical environment), absence of some of the utilities and illegality of tenure. These conditions are generally limited to classify the problem from a physical and legal way, leaving out the socioeconomic dimension, despite its importance for a comprehensive interpretation of this phenomenon. While not necessarily all urban poor citizens reside in slums (ONU Habitat 2003), it is clear that there is a direct correlation between informality and poverty, where both end up being a cause and effect of the other. By one side, the informal urban city borns as a result of the inability of the poor economic class to access formal city. On the other, poverty also means a low level of education and health conditions, a degraded habitat by itself leads to a worsening poverty (UN-Habitat, 2006). Additionally, the informal sectors of a city generally tend to coincide with the areas that produce crime and violence, as a result the high degree of social inequality that distinguishes them from the formal city (ONUHábitat, 2006). From the favelas of Rio, the slums of Nairobi, through the katchi abadis of Karachi, many cases that testify how these sectors are concentrations where illegal armed groups proliferate, dedicated to illegal activities as drug trafficking, kidnapping, robbery, and so on, extending its scope to the entire city.

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2.1 Urban Settlements, the case of Bogota & Medellin (Colombia) In this context, the case of Colombia is exemplary in terms of typifying the problem. The country, with over 75% of its population living in cities, has between 20% and 30% of its urban population living in precarious settlements (UN-Habitat, 2006). Colombia is also the country with Brazil in Latin America with the highest rate of urban inequality and insecurity (ONUHábitat, 2009). Over the last decade, Colombia has been a touchstone of what good design and enlightened politics can do for cities. If Barcelona was the urban example of the 1990s, urbanism these days are more likely to mention Colombia's capital, Bogotá, and its second city, Medellín. In both cities, sequences of dynamic mayors have use transport infrastructure and new public buildings as tools of social change. But this tale of two cities doesn't come with two happy endings. In Bogotá, two mayors in particular, the former philosophy professor Antanas Mockus and Enrique Peñalosa, had a dramatic impact. Famously, they brought decent sidewalks, bike lanes and the Transmilenio bus service to bypass the capital's crippling traffic – measures that privileged the non-car-owning poor. Their achievements have even been celebrated in more than one documentary. But this success story has gone wrong. Today, the Transmilenio is so overcrowded even the passengers go on strike; there are so many road projects underway that traffic has come to a standstill; and the last mayor, Samuel Moreno, awaits trial for corruption. "Eight years ago you believed in this city, now it's in crisis," says Giancarlo Mazzanti, Colombia's most renowned architect. You could not say the same of Medellín, which has undergone an incredible transformation. In the 1990s, Medellín was the murder capital of the world. Then home to Pablo Escobar and the warring drug cartels, this is a city where almost everyone has a tragic story about a friend or relative. Violent crime remains a problem, especially in the poorest neighborhoods, but nothing like in its heyday. These days Medellín is more likely to make the news for yet another photogenic building. In recent years it has kept architecture magazines drip-fed with self-consciously iconic projects of the kind that has been thin on the ground since the recession.

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3. The transformation of a city, study case Medellin Medellin is the capital city of the Antioquia state, in the South American country of Colombia. With a metropolitan population of almost 3.5 millions it concentrates 12% of the Colombian population, producing around 15% of the national GDP. After Bogota, which is the capital city of Colombia, Medellin is the second largest industrial pole of the country and leads the national energy production, as well as the banana, coffee and gold trade in the national and international markets. Similarly to the paradox mentioned in the introduction regarding Latin America, the prosperity of this city is eclipsed by disparities about the quality of life between the population residing at the formal urban area (mainly located within the Valley area) and the population that occupies some of their surrounding hills on precarious settlements. 3.1 Marginality in Medellin The process of informalization, understood as the formation of slums, has characterized the history of Medellin over the past century as a result of the increasing migration to the city, which represents a constant throughout much of the twentieth century. This have their origins in the late nineteenth century by the catalytic effect of the ongoing process of industrialization in the valley of Aburrá, which revitalized in an irreversible way the urban development, making Medellin the main economic center of the region (Coupé, 1996). The effects of this population growth began to see early the last century, because of a substantial increase in housing demand. This is mainly associated with the production of homes for the working class, as due to the great amount of labor required by the emerging industry (Poveda, 1996). From this time began to appear, especially towards the east side and along the tram routes and major roads, new neighborhoods of public and private initiative. The first are product of the creation of institutions created ad hoc, as the Institute of Territorial Credit and the Central Mortgage Fund, and they represent the effort of local landowners who saw an opportunity in this process in the appropriation of urban capital gains (Toro, 1988). Despite this great "public-private" effort the demand for housing continues to grow in the following decades. Because of a new migratory wave, rural displacement caused by the violence of political origin of the fifties, the annual growth rate of the city rises to 6% (Coupé, 1996). To the sixties, the informal city, formed by illegal processes of subdivision and progressive self-construction housing. The new dynamic of urbanization, growing in intensity, begins to generate a deep segregation in social and economic development in the city. To the north and the highlands of eastern and western slopes will locate the informal city, where the poor find shelter in the unconsolidated city. Parallel to this, upper and middle classes are at the center and south Valley, on the surface of the formal planned city.

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Medellin defines its way of two realities, two "opposed cities" segregated dramatically due to its conditions of location and topography. Thirty years later, with a new wave of violence, rural displacement, and the emergence of drug trafficking, the phenomenon begins to take on a political and social dimension drama never before experienced. The neighborhoods of the northern slopes of the valley, commonly called "comunas" become the natural habitat of illegal gangs, drug traffickers and common criminals. As a result of this process of informalization, and parallel to a progressive dynamic urban consolidation of these areas, today Medellin according to the classification of soil written on the Territorial Management Plan (Plan de Ordenamiento Territorial - POT), has 25% of its territory in neighborhoods with different levels of marginality. The "comunas" located towards the northern central and central city, correspond to areas with the lowest rate of quality of life and human development (Mayor of Medellin, 2004) and coincide to be sectors with the highest rate of violence. To respond to this phenomenon since the nineties, government, academia and NGOs, have been studying and implementing programs to transform the quality of life of the inhabitants of the slums, and offset some of the social debt accumulated over decades in inequality.

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4. Beginnings of the urban transformation 4.1 Development Plans Background: PRIMED The PRIMED (Integral Program for the Informal Settlements Improvement of Medellin) was taken as a Colombian referent, which established an important precedent, being one of the first programs with an integral approach facing the reality of the informal urban sectors in Medellin. Its basic planning principles were: community, territory, state, and rational investment interconnected through integral levels within all the notions. The initiative started in 1993, through a National law that officially declared a tripartite cooperation strategy between the National Governments of Colombia and German Government (supported by the Ministry of Finances and the KFW bank group), as well as the Medellin local government, with the participation of the Program of the United Nations for Development (PNUD) and the Social Solidarity Network RSS among others (Blanco 2002). The PRIMED focused on improving the quality of life for 200,000 people living in 70 peripheral districts, through public services improvements and community participation. It was awarded in 1996, as one of the “best practices” at the second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements held in Istanbul, Turkey, due to its intergovernmental coordination, its provision of public services’ infrastructure and the land regularization efforts. Although successful in the first years, the program then suffered economic problems and politicians reduced support , which ended weakening the original operational structure and dried it up. However, it enhanced a remarkable antecedent in the country, especially because it was not limited to the physical component of upgrading, but included a complete social perspective among training and community building its own strategies.

4.2 Politics shaping architecture

Sergio Fajardo:

A mathematician by profession, was mayor of the city of Medellin, charge he held since 2003 when was presented to the municipal elections, accompanied by a platform of what he called Independent Civic Movement, Which he is founding member, until January 2008 when his term ended. On an interview on 2007 titled “Changing the Skin to the City” he says "for many years in Medellin we built fences that separated us. Invisible walls divided the city, turning it into fragments, in small ghettos in which we related to those just like us, we only knew each reduced space, because violence, fear, distrust, prevented us from moving freely. We needed then a conception that would meet our two main problems: violence and social inequalities.” For this purpose he resorted to a series of programs and transformer projects, but

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the bet was made to put a strong investment in education for the population, reflected in the model called "Medellin the most educated " which in a broad concept of education, includes a series of governmental interventions designed to produce substantial changes to reduce violence and create opportunities for knowledge and development of the inhabitants of this city. But it was also very important for a strong urban renewal process set in a concept of sustainable urban development and regeneration in view of the social tissue of the target communities. To get to this point was essential the process of building a political project that departed from its origin, the commitment of citizens tired of the way they ran the city of Medellin. To develop a project like this, citizen participation was an essential component, because it requires mobilizing citizens from different social and political strata, and calls them to be part of that transformation. “20% of education in Medellin is private and serves the higher strata of society, while 80% is public and serves the lower strata”. This was one of the first challenges for Sergio Fajardo and for this he proposed giving high quality education for everyone, for all the society, following that education can no longer be a privilege, it is and shall be a right. Fajardo implies that education and knowledge is a meeting place for citizens regardless of the social condition that each one has. And for him, in the pubic area and in education is where we are all essentially establishing other bonds that break inequality.

For many years he has focused his efforts in the area of significant academic universities in the country and the world, and has been awarded several times as a researcher and for his entrepreneur spirit

Alejandro Echeverri:

After finishing his architecture studies in Medellin, Alejandro Echeverri traveled to Barcelona to earn his PhD in urban planning from ETSAB. Since then, he began to watch and study his city as he has done before "I was trying to understand it, to see it, with the help of experts, how could we transform some neighborhoods” says Echeverri. He returned to Colombia to work with research groups of the UPB (Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana de Medellin), and focus on the northeastern and northwestern areas of Medellin, in assessing how he could make intervention projects in the neighborhoods of these sectors. The year was 2003, and Sergio Fajardo was elected, then Echeverri got contacted to help him build the urban plan of his previous proposal. On the first of January 2004, Fajardo was sworn in as mayor and the architect, who a few years ago looked to Medellin from the city in northeastern Spain, became the leader of the process of urban transformation of the city. Came with him the second stage of metrocable, parks, libraries, the revival of Carabobo Pedestrian Zone and Botanical Gardens. Later, the idea of a Science Park of Technology.

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He was the manager of the EDU (Empresa de Desarrollo Urbano) during Fajardo’s administration, an independent institute parallel to the Public Works branch of the city with an autonomous budget. In that Alejandro saw the potential of exploding the institute’s capacity to enhance what the mayor wanted on his political career. He established multidisciplinary groups among architects, urbanists, sociologists, social workers, communicators and lawyers among others to target for every need of the city, by the creation of this they all became specialized in understanding the site and its community.

5. Hands on Integral Urban Projects

Under the leadership of recently elected Mayor Sergio Fajardo, the city, in 2004, decides to invest by public policy aimed at redressing the profound social debts accumulated over decades with the problems of violence. In this were implemented as so determined, structural changes that integrally combined education, culture and entrepreneurship with the "change of skin" as Fajardo calls it of some of the neighborhoods located in the most dangerous parts of the city. The strategy is defined based on an idea, "Medellin the most educated" for the transformation of the "comuna" taking the urban planning issues with the so called Integral Urban Project (PUI in Spanish) as the tool of strategic change for the city. For this where applied in the selected territories the best technical knowledge and the best quality designs (Rodriguez, 2010). The Urban Development Company (Empresa de Desarrollo Urbano – EDU in Spanish) in Medellin, a decentralized entity of the city of Medellín that was created in 1993, located several Strategic Urban Projects identified as priorities in the development plan of the city. 5.1 Description The Integral Urban Projects IUP are dependent programs of Urban Development Company (EDU) of Medellin which endeavors to combine physical rehabilitation efforts with improvements in terms of social inclusion of people and place emphasis on institutional coordination and citizen participation. These programs are aimed at areas with physical (low standards of housing in general related to informality, lack of public and environmental degradation), institutional (sparse and disjointed interventions by the government) and social (poverty, lack of marked opportunities and social exclusion, as well as high levels of violence).

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5.2 Policy Objectives An Integral Urban Project is “a model of urban intervention that aims to raise quality levels of life in a specific area”. For this purpose, concentrates all the resources into a single territory as an urban acupuncture action, with the aim to focus efforts and achieve a result that is reflected in the comprehensive development and the transformation of communities, socially and physically. It is designed especially to address the most depressed and marginalized areas of the cities where the state usually has a high social debt and to be used as a replicable intervention model "(Cardenas 2006). The key areas of action are: • Improve the interventions of the government: institutions conform municipal coordination and working groups with private entities to achieve social and academic agreements to these sectors. These also involve state agencies and the scope of international cooperation. • Strengthen participation: both community organizations and population not associated with participating in all phases of the project. This participation is key to the subsequent appropriation of the services and facilities generated. • Improved public space: it recognizes its importance in promoting social cohesion and seeks to improve through specific works (such as parks and recreation) and the organization and improvement of mobility patterns. Another key objective is to improve pedestrian mobility. • Construction and improvement of public facilities: libraries, schools, health centers, etc.… • Improve housing conditions: regularize illegal situations, rehabilitate and build new housing and put particular attention to sensitive areas such as housing on streams. • Environmental sustainability: through reforestation, renewal of flora and fauna, environmental recovery of degraded areas, improved water treatment, etc.

5.3 Implementation

The construction of the Metro Cable (a project of mobility and transport of the government of Medellín sought to connect the city center with outlying areas to the metro line) reduced the gap between this areas and the city center; also marked the beginning of a new relationship with government by recognizing this areas of the city and making improvement works in areas close to the stations.

The IUP supported and promoted the location of the stations, in order to complement and expand the impact generated by the Metrocable. A neighborhood process was implemented to allow consolidation of structures and order the territory (and not only to improve their accessibility) through works and projects under public and community facilities, parks, streets, walkways and

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bridges, to connect neighborhoods, among others. The northeastern PUI focused in the provision and improvement of public infrastructure as engine of social transformation, pointing to the densely formed neighborhoods of the fifties, mostly through illegal processes of urbanization and illegal invasion (Naranjo, 1992). The magnitude and complexity of the polygon of intervention, with a population of over 150.000 people concentrated in more than ten districts, with complex topographical and morphological conditions required a detailed analysis of the territory. In 2004 Alejandro Echeverri, head of the urbanism of the city made the reconstruction on the evolutionary process of urban forms in neighborhoods and the analysis of its structural elements supported by the Laboratory of Urban Barcelona (LUB). The urban project thus became the dynamic processes of inclusion and social development as an alternative to violence and indifference that prevailed for decades in the industry. Thus, broken bridges, for example, by simple addition of pedestrian connectors, turned into community integrators; to connect spaces divided by imaginary and impassable boundary lines. As the library of Spain in Santo Domingo, because of its strategic location and its educational programs, became the main community reference and the proponent of an approach to knowledge and education as an alternative to guns. 5.4 Funding The northeastern IUP was almost completely financed by the public administration of the city of Medellin. Resources from the Annual budgets of different secretaries involved in the project reached during the first four years, 144.000 million pesos (80 million dollars) of investment in physical transformation. This investment run a total of 125 000 m2 of works that included 18 different public parks, pedestrian and vehicular streets, and construct numerous public amenities such as Spain Park Library, the Santo Domingo school, the sports Granizal and the Center for Development of Enterprise Zone (CEDEZO). To carry out these works were hired local workforce, which totaled more than 2300 people employed during the four-year project. Medellín developed a model that many cities around the world could learn from. For instance, the local energy company, EPM, is neither private nor nationalized but owned by the city, and it was decided that its profits (about $450m a year) should be fed back into the city; making Medellín to have a tremendous spending power. Alongside this public-private partnership, the mayors have actively sought out the advice of an architecture community trained in the problems of their own city. Again, this is all too rare. In a short space of time, Medellín has turned itself into a model Latin American city, with good transport, dynamic public spaces, new schools and a culture of civic architecture. The real design project, however, was one of social organization, with a section of society grouping together and deciding to rewrite their city's story.

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6. Library Parks The library Parks are crucial part of former mayor, Sergio Fajardo’s strategy: “Medellin the most educated”. The interventions are specifically called Library Parks because of their aim to achieve an urban transformation (mostly through the creation of public spaces). The development plan 2004-2007 states its interest in “strengthening the libraries as integral centers for development and social culture” The library parks are strategically located around the city responding to the PUI that was mentioned before, aiming to cater some of the most disadvantaged sectors, which most of the time, consist of informal settlements. Since favelas are considered the areas with greater educational, cultural, public spaces and basic services deficits, the libraries are placed either adjacent to them or in the interior of the informal urban tissue.

Following is the criteria for their location:

- Proximity to public transportation of high or medium capacity.

- Proximity to environmental systems. The Medellin River traverses the valley from North to South. Connected to this river, are various creeks that run down the mountains (E-W). The POT (zoning plan) has considered these streams as strategic elements for the creation of public space and a better quality of life in the city. As such, a series of linear parks bordering the creaks, have been planed and constructed, whenever possible connecting to the library parks.

- The strengthening of favelas as new centralities with the implementation of educational, cultural and sports programs and amenities.

The EDU (Empresa de Desarrollo Urbano) is the organization in charge of the library parks (conception, construction and management). There are 10 library parks planned:

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  BP Piloto

PB La Quintana

 

PB San Javier

 

PB La Ladera

 

PB España

PB Belén

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6.1 Parque Bilblioteca San Javier Architect: Javier Vera Public Space: 9993 m2 Constructed Space: 5632 m2 Budget: 9.8 US million

The library park San Javier is located next to the San Javier metro station, as well as the beginning of the San Cristobal Metro Cable.

The library and metro stations are seen as nodes, connected with public space for the creation of plazas, exterior walkways and pedestrian bridges. Adjacent to the library, is the Hueso Stream linear park. This library park mostly serves the Comuna 13 and the Central West periphery.

The design consists of one large volume, containing reading rooms, computer rooms, a gallery and a semi indoor-outdoor amphitheater. The program is divided into a series of terraces connected by continuous stairs and ramps.

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6.2 Parque Bilbioteca Leon de Greiff Architect: Giancarlo Mazzanti Public Space: 17,288 m2 Constructed Space: 3,784 m2 Budget: 7.1 US million The project proposes the organization of the program in a building divided in three parts. Each unit of use can be opened or closed depending on hours or events that exist in the site. In this way the building can activate its different parts, having a single access. Project is conceived as a landscape of platforms launched to the emptiness that operate as observation points or teatrinos, places for community gathering, maintaining relations with the center of the city through its useful rooftop. Are anchored to the ground to look at him. The project was organized into three-square modules that turn, adapting to the topography and views, they share and relate to each over a curved connector. A built landscape gives continuity to the topography of the site and the park, through the creation of public space in the upper deck with three teatrinos or inclined plazas and a mall looking at the central areas of the city. The revolving relationships and changes of depth, produced by the rotation of the containers are those which carry the space to opportunities of meeting and experience of life events, either as in the public space of the rooftop or inside. The project is the beginning of a great metropolitan park.

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The project is located on the edge of downtown, at the beginning of a large green area that reaches the top of the mountain, the only free zone in the eastern slope. Is constructed as an observing place that initiates the organization of a large urban park in the future, a series of habitable viewpoints for the meeting is proposed as a neighborhood communication system. The proposal seeks to maintain the spatial relationship between the recreational park on the hillside and the overlooking of the city, proposing a sequence of viewpoints and stands for community meeting. It seeks to establish a project that supports as much urban connectivity as possible and the development of potential urban public spaces towards the mountain.

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6.3 Parque Bilbioteca Tomas Carrasquilla Architect: Ricardo La Rotta Caballero Public Space: 10,470 m2 Constructed Space: 3,703 m2 Budget: 7.5 US million This project as intervention strategy proposes the creation of a new zonal center, articulating from its location in the watershed of the Quintana stream, neighborhoods that have been separated for its geographic conditions. The project is reinforced by its involvement in the public space of the Quebrada Linear Park, which already has operations in the municipality at the bottom. In addition to its location is intended to complement the central neighborhood of Altamira and Kennedy, articulating to pedestrians in the north to south area and providing location for new developments on the Carrera 80, major axis for the future developing of Metroplus public transport system.

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The building is designed as a shade cover, intended to generate the integration of natural systems and the building as a way of diluting the architecture in the landscape. The project becomes a threshold of the city, as a street, allowing public spaces for community gathering as a park. Also connects these public activities with the library and its services at a lower level, which constitutes the core of the project.

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6.4 Parque Bilbioteca Espana (Santo Domingo Savio) Architect: Giancarlo Mazzanti Public Space: 7,500 m2 Constructed Space: 2,960 m2 Budget: 8.1 US million The border in the mountains of Medellin is composed of an intricate network of trails, product of the displacement of the topography and green-sloped residual spaces generated by the inability to build on it. This network functions as a small set of public meeting places. It seeks to empower these points and tie the network of public spaces as a way of a great urban dock that serves as the city connecting point for the interior of the project developed by the viewpoints done by the EDU (Empresa de Desarrollo Urbano) and existing cable station, increasing the amount of urban connectivity and meeting places in the city. The project proposes the construction of three volumes, which perch on the cliff, artificial rocks, by the way they relate to geography. The shape of the building has to do with big rocks on the tops of mountains, which are illuminated to create an image that serves as a symbol of the city and enhance urban development and public activity in the area. The project is a living rock sequence that seeks to be visible from the valley as a symbol of the city, a landscape that redefines the folded structure of the mountain as form and space, hence its emerging order.

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The project proposes two types of structure. The first artificial rocks as objects, vertical buildings that organize the program in three volumes: library, community center and cultural center. The second structure is the platform where lays the three previous volumes, which roof is a public square and serves as an observation point to the city. A rocky landscape is designed, a space with multiple network connections for meeting and gathering. The image of the building is variable and is defined by changes of light and the position of the viewer because of the twists and deformations of the slabs that make up the folds. The ultimate goal is to create pedagogical environments (theming) instead of forms of architecture and evolve from a organizative system of abstract relations to a system of environments, where objects not only work for disposal, but they are created through the interaction of environments -a machine of perceptions. It aims for a sequence of vertical and linear routes, changing and theme, suitable for multiple events.

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6.5 Parque Bilbioteca Belen Architect: Hiroshi Naito Public Space: 9,768 m2 Constructed Space: 5,233 m2 Budget: 7.1 US million

Contrary to the other library designs, which were competitions, this design was donated by a Japanese architect Hiroshi Naito. The execution was done in conjunction with architects of the EDU. The distribution consists of 3 main courtyards containing 15 small buildings articulated in three large public spaces – a concrete courtyard, a water courtyard and a green courtyard. The library is located next to a hospital and takes the place of what used to be a prison. Surrounding the library, are middle class neighborhoods.

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Projects Currently under construction: San Cristobal Library - Park

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12 de Octubre Library – Park

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6.6 Achievements of the Library Parks They have created a huge amount of opportunities for citizen participation in depressed environments, making, in this case the architecture, an urban landmark that references knowledge. To convert these marginalized urban nodes, with improved environments of social and economic hope relationships that energize people and strengthen community contributes to improve the quality of life of communities, creating better and new conditions for neighborhoods and urban habitat in general, setting in five different strategic areas Medellin Library Parks promote coexistence and citizenship education through new spaces and urban services quality. As the Account Coordinator of the Tomas Carrasquilla Library “La quintana” says: "This used to be a little mountain, where one neighbor and the other use to have confrontations due to illicit practices . . . why? Because to the right is the neighborhood called Kennedy, up is Robledo, below is Alfonso Lopez, maybe the most dangerous neighborhoods of the city met at this point. After this, people become grateful to see so many negative things converted in a nice public space, with good quality, where qualified personnel provides the best service with good quality equipment and since then people are very grateful for this " All the Library Parks have different areas of leisure to do more pleasant the stay of its users: Toy libraries, reading rooms for children and adults, auditoriums, exhibition hall, Internet facilities for children and adults, to borrow books for free and green open areas, among others. These Library Parks have achieved the condition for locals and tourists to gather in this places regularly, breaking with the fear of the site as the result of the tragic history and its stigma, managing to transform this situation into an action where people learn more about different places of the city. Where before coexisted frustration and despair, today there is hope, freedom and contemplation. Through transformer projects they have created new places, icons of the meeting and coexistence.

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Lackness 5%

Effectiveness 95%

Security

Lackness 23%

Effectiveness 77%

Social Inclussion

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Lackness 23%

Effectiveness 77%

Coexistence

0% 0% 0% 3% 0% 0% 7% 5% 8% 9% 10% 13% 13% 10%

15%

70%

50% 60% 58% 55%

Zona Nororiental Zona Noroccidental

Zona Centroriental Zona Centroccidental

Zona Suroccidental

Do the Library-Parks enhance the social participation? Nunca Ocasionalmente Frecuentemente Siempre

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10% 13% 18% 7%

14%

70% 68% 57%

74%

59%

Zona Nororiental Zona Noroccidental

Zona Centroriental Zona Centroccidental

Zona Suroccidental

Did you use to have access to the internet before the Library -

Parks? si no

Always Sometimes Not So much

Never

Does the Library Park helps to solve cultural, invest igat ive or academic in i t iat ives?

53.70 % 36.2% 6.3% 3.8%

Does the Library Park makes easier the formation of the Cit izens on social ethics?

73.80% 17.3% 4.8% 3.6%

Does the Library Park give an easy Access to information you never had?

81% 10.8% 2.5% 3.3%

Is the Library Park a scenary for the promotion of Culture and Peace?

80% 14.8% 1% 3%

Is the Library Park one of the places you preffer to vis i to on your spare t ime?

65% 25.8% 5.5% 2.5%

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7. Schools of Quality

Colombia and in specific Medellin has seen in recent times the construction of numerous new social and cultural provisions result of a careful planification conducted by the different administrations of the country. Among these projects, education are probably the ones that have generated more intensive architectural criticism and debate because many of them have been the result of open competitions for everyone. This has allowed that formal and compositional experimentation is being possible in traditionally conservative areas. 7.1 Colegio Las Mercedes – Juan Manuel Peláez

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7.2 Colegio Pajarito – Ctrl G / Federico Mesa

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7.3 Colegio Altavista

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7.4 Colegio La Independencia

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7.5 Colegio Hector Abad Faciolince

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7.6 Colegio Santo Domingo

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7.7 Colegio Maestro Fernando Botero

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7.8 Colegio Lara Bonilla

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8. South American Games Medellin is not just an important financial and industrial center but has become one of the most vibrant cultural centers of Colombia to host festivals of all kinds, also is abundant the academic and scientific activity developed in their universities. This offer is amplified in 2010 by the celebration of the IX South American Games, during two weeks, fifteen countries where welcomed participating in 42 different sports, with a total inflow audience estimated per day of around 12,000 people added to the 3,750 athletes. 8.1 Sports Complex for the South American Games Giancarlo Mazzanti / Plan:b arquitectos Located in Valle del Aburra, the new building houses four new and different sports scenarios (gymnastics, wrestling, basketball and volleyball) and is conceived as a single container solved with a unique space technique and strategy that made it possible to respond effectively to the rapid timing of construction, to respond flexible requirements -Geometric and functional, for each sport and be permeable to the flow of visitors that from the outside, were going to move to some other scenarios.

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8.2 Water Scapes Paisajes Emergentes Result of a competition organized by the mayors office for a design of a new series of sports facilities, the Aquatic complex is located also in the Aburra Valley; This unique context was taken into account since the beginning of the project and when rethinking the pieces, which are located in such order so that the greater part of common space is free, and new uses can be opened to views of the hills. The program, designed both to respond to the event of the Games and to provide a service after the event giving a second social life and enduring infrastructure. Consists of four new pools: one, Olympic, 50 meters x 25 meters, another for synchronized swimming 30 meter x 25 meters (whose glass is drilled to contemplate the show underwater), and two for teaching. These pools are seen as multifunctional platforms whose Planted cover connects footpaths through the ramps. Below the level of the pools, is located the restrooms, meeting areas and areas of warm up, which are illuminated with natural light through a series of buried courtyards. The only building which exceeds the level of the pools is an elongated permeable one, designed for administrative purposes. The fundamental strategy of the project consists to articulate this complex program in a garden system of linking the pools with the surroundings.

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8.3 Orquideorama Camilo Restrepo + Plan: B The organization uses two patterns of hierarchy, the forest and the foliage, along with the efficiency of a hexagonal honeycomb. It is the result of an architecture paralleling the trees in the botanical garden. This is a large bouquet of flowers before a neat volume set of trees of a coated metal slats that create a lean irregular perimeter. These new trees amplify the existing environment in the botanical, filter the light, water enters, supports vegetation and the landscape opens horizontally. Free admission to the botanical garden has made this become a real public park in the city.

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9. Metro Cable - Social Catenary EDU (Alejandro Echeverri /AE) In the particular Northeast sector, the development of the among enlisted strategies involving the construction of libraries, schools and other endowments is all supported in the Metrocable path: a unique infrastructure of mass transportation by cable cranes that, compared to other examples such as Caracas and Rio de Janeiro, is conceived mainly as a means of social development. The new line connect the 1995 metro system station -located at 1,470 –bound with Santo Domingo Savio in an elevation of 1,750 and by this strategy also allowed to expand in 9,000 square meters of public urbanized areas. From its inauguration in 2004, the design has benefited more than 170,000 people living up in the poorest parts of the city and has opened the city to new exchanges, thus reactivating the economy of the affected neighborhoods.

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10. CONCLUSIONS The Latin American city has experienced in recent decades a strong process of urbanization and because of this also the rate of growth of informal settlements has augmented dramatically. Despite this, over 30% of the urban area of Medellin (Colombia) today presents some kind of weakness on physical and / or social character, and the production of affordable housing remains below the demand. For these reasons, policies to encourage neighborhood improvement are important today to combat national urban benchmarks of marginality and guarantee the right to the city to all its inhabitants. The urban conditions are already settled trough the construction of this public buildings, but is needed some private initiatives to develop more quality housing to full fill this plan. Even if the initiative of the dwellings are private, governmental or NGO funded it is crucial to change the way people are living inside their houses, is very important to construct equalitarian social spaces but in the same hand is also important to take a look at what is happening inside the living units. Similarly, every time more often the processes of citizen participation have acquired more importance in the construction of the city, this, might be the result of good politicians that focus their efforts working towards the city and the citizenships resulting in the creation of specialized institutions to lead projects and manage budgets correctly. All this policies also seek to increase the level of commitment and community empowerment, encouraging the creation of a more democratic and governable city, where the broad consensus becomes the basis for successfulness. Despite this, in the cases analyzed, the methods used are still limited on the decision-making capacity of communities and governments, highlighting the need to encourage more and more the implementation of planning process of bottom-up, as suggested by the international community. It is also necessary to articulate even more physical actions with socioeconomic, cultural and educational programs that transcend temporality to build local capacity interventions, which allows the sustainability of communities. This would help communities to improve their economic conditions through employment generation, accessing to better education, and improving hygiene and health, among others. All these factors are essential to alleviate urban poverty and combat the seeds of violence that still pervades these sectors. It is certain to say that urban interventions in violent social sectors, besides being a civil right, are also a great contribution as seed capital for new generations to grow up now with alternatives to violence. The way is not to tacitly consider such buildings, parks or cable car stations as large social transformers themselves, when they are just simply a small part of all the gear of social and urban interventions that come together in an assembly of policies- such as when the architects of CIAM1 of 1933 drafted the Charter of Athens while believing that the absence of light in buildings or certain spatial distribution generated diseases and or favored promiscuity –

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A building, however if it is well or not so well resolved, does not guarantee a definitive solution to the profound social problems, but it does contribute the citizens to overturn on what was visible only in the judicial pages of newspapers. The construction of symbols as sign of belonging to a site is also important to overpass these huge social gap, people are proud of what they have on their neighborhoods, and even, they have better buildings than the rich people of the city which rely on private institutions. It is important to trust in architecture and to trust in architects as people that interpreted the common will to achieve a social transformation, not only by the look of buildings, but rather from the conjugation of different programs that attend the community. As Josep Lluis Mateo says "The icons in contemporary architecture are characterized by expressive autonomy and disconnection from their context" - He also recognizes that while at first monumental architecture [icon] represented a unique moment for the community, now in the contemporary city iconic architecture continues to move forward to be a phenomenon promoter of difference and distance, even if the cultural mass appeal because of its proximity, by repetition, different from the phenomenon of "unique." In this case, the excess of trust in architecture as a Social Transformer is what makes architecture Iconic, we can not rely on icons as social transformers by themselves, if it is true that social landmarks are needed to be established in impaired places to shout out certain conditions, this landmarks have to be accompanied by strong educative programs and policies that strengthen the building itself. It is not important to have a good looking building if nobody uses it, are communities the ones that build the icon of architecture, by relating an architecture to a use, not by its look. It is remarkable that the concern of many of the local architects was focused on whether the building was "nice" or "ugly" and if it was worth of being implemented in depressed areas of the city, the real background discussion in both cases, should be focused into understand that the real peacemaker is the inclusion of resource investment in sectors that were always aside of them, even if knowing that this is a social right. And also, to understand that before a proposed architecture is given a reality, there is a hard work behind the program that is determining the type of action, obtaining resources and working with communities to raise the audit process. For this, is important the commitment of the architect outside the politics and outside the time. Architecture should commit towards community and towards the site and not towards formalistic approaches. It is true that some of the projects enlisted before are pieces and manifestos of contemporary Colombian architecture, it is also very important to establish an autochthonous architecture, is understandable that we nowadays live in the information world and that buildings are more often globalized but at the same time is important to understand architecture as a social and site practice where is very important to rely on history and on understanding and empowering the site characteristics.

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There is no doubt that the social policies of the city have made good use of architecture as a mean to improve the daily lives of violent sectors, and in the process have built up large and valuable buildings and urban spaces that have very good qualities to talk about them as architecture. It is also irrefutable to say that a tool such as architecture can define the cities (but in some cases is not enough), that the reflection of the social and cultural conditions, and also the acceptance of measures and proposals for the development of the city, reveal that not every initiative aims to the contribution of architecture as a definition of our own culture, and instead tends to exhibit itself as a protagonist. In conclusion, it is clear that, despite everything has been already tested, much remains to be done. The comunas of Medellin are far from the ideal habitat residents want and deserve: inequality, lack of opportunity, environmental degradation, natural and physical insecurity and violence continue to be the common denominators that characterize them. The projects described here should be considered as first, important seeds in the process of physical and social integration between the informal city and conveying all this processes are one of the main challenges facing Medellin and other Colombian cities in search of a more equitable city. Is also important that now Medellin is starting from a revitalized city that has the urban conditions for having more development, this as an experiment and laboratory of dreams will just be showed by time, by the architecture of time.

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