Thickening the threshold

Public spaces for encounter in the entry squares of Universidad Nacional de Colombia.

Master thesis (2019)

Authors

A. Panasiuk Architecture and the Built Environment

Contributors

A. Altes Arlandis Situated Architecture - Architecture and the Built Environment (supervisor 1)
G. Koskamp Design of Constrution - Architecture and the Built Environment (supervisor 2)
J.A. Mejia Hernandez Situated Architecture - Architecture and the Built Environment (supervisor 2)
K.M. Havik Situated Architecture - Architecture and the Built Environment (supervisor 2)
Faculty
Architecture and the Built Environment
Copyright: © 2019 Agnieszka Panasiuk
Threshold Boundary Architecture Topography Bogota Informal economy Thirding
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Published Date

2019

Language

English

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Faculty

Architecture and the Built Environment

Abstract

In September 2018 I have traveled to Bogota -
the capital of Colombia with a group of Methods & Analysis students and
teachers. During the trip to Bogota I have repeatedly visited the campus of
Universidad Nacional de Colombia – a national higher education institution.
What stayed with me the most after these visits were not the sights of the most
prominent university buildings and representative spaces but quite
contrastingly – pictures of the forgotten lawns and the dilapidated fence which
marks the boundary of the campus. Universidad Nacional has been isolated from
the rest of the city by a fence raised in 1970’s and even more severely by busy
traffic arteries. In spite of the separation, the campus plays an invaluable
role in the lives of the inhabitants of Bogota. Not to mention the thousands of
students, who daily cross the gates, innumerable families and groups of friends
arrive at Universidad Nacional to rest and play there. The campus is a green
resource for the city.Boundary is a social contract in which the sides agree
that a contradiction cannot be resolved in any way other than separating the
conflicted sides. If the separation is not questioned the status quo remains.
An architect – a person whose work is to introduce change – is inclined to
question the division. And what happens if we transform the environment in such
way that the discourse, more intensive exchange between the sides and with each
other realities become possible? The reality supplies one of the possible
answers. In the present state of affairs many aspects of the functioning of the
student life have been left to the informal market. In fact the informal
markets flourish near the boundary. Vendors have discovered the boundary in a
way that does not conform to the orthodox understanding of a boundary. The
organic, unplanned, improvised erodes the stiff, regulated, formalized.What
would it take to open the gates for the other realities though?