Architect(s): El Equipo Mazzanti | Taller de Arquitectura de Bogotá
Address: Cl. 41 #57, La Candelaria, MEDELLÍN, Colombia
Latitude/Longitude: 6.241024445846742,-75.57601271822772
Photographs: Carlos Tobón
Medellin´s International Convention Center was conceived based on the idea of an “open doors” city, defining a contrast with the traditional approach, where institutional building are surrounded by fences, and therefore isolated from the neighborhood. On the contrary, the project boosts the un-built areas, making them as important as the constructed ones, allowing the public space to act as the main generator of urban activity.
The project transformed the original site by manipulating the composition of the “base plan”, from which a new artificial topography and a new piazza was created. The now public realm, enables massive events to occur, attracts people, and overcrowds the place while generating a new centrality for the city.
The image of the building is a sequence of simple volumes covered with different building envelopes, ranging from solid stone, through timber louvers, and finally to the un-materiality provided by glass, which allows for an interesting mixture of light and shadows. These skins are therefore a metaphorical form of the base of a rock to the vertical sequence of wood elements.
The main box or main lobby, is an artifact able to assume the changing range of activities that happen in this type of building. The inner space allows several transformations, alternating from a meeting place, an open covered and shaded piazza, to a place for concerts and events, or even provides an additional space for temporal gallery or fair. The sequence of building skins (stone+timber+glass) grants a unique and flexible configuration of the provided spaces. This makes is possible, at the same time, the use of the hall every day of the year, regardless of whether the Convention Center is open and operating or closed to the public.
Text description provided by the architects.
Client: Medellin´s International Convention Center
Partners: Taller de Arquitectura de Bogotá + El Equipo Mazzanti + Rafael Esguerra
Collaborators: Sergio Restrepo, Alberto Fonseca, Mauricio Ortega, Alberto Aranda, Angélica Rojas, Victor Gonzáles, Samuel Martínez, Tomas Silva, Gustavo Camacho, Sebastián Sanint, Emerson Marín Parra, Federico Mesa
Contributed by Taller de Arquitectura de Bogotá
