The ambitious and successful design of a kindergarten in the Colombian city of Medellin (of Pablo Escobar infamy), is a promising portent both for the city’s fortunes and for the future of the nation’s architecture. By Sergio Pirrone.
January 6th, 2014
Aided by a strong economy and motivated by a desire to jettison past decades of infamy, the Colombian city of Medellin (international drug lord Pablo Escobar’s base of operations) is rebuilding its educational facilities.
A series of public schools have been mushrooming in the last few years, especially within the poorest slum areas crowning the hills of its valley. This is also the case for the Jardin Infantil Carpinelo (Carpinelo Kindergarten), located in the namesake neighbourhood on the city’s eastern edge.
Architect firm Ctrl G Estudio de Arquitectura had already been commissioned to design two similar kindergartens. By adopting a similar architectural program, the two young chief architects Catalina Patiño and Viviana Peña conceived their third work as belonging to the same organism model, which is highly responsive to topography.
The master plan is a texture of geometrical outlines, a 1500m2 patch looking out on the stunning cityscape, contained by a dense agglomerate of humble red clay low-rise houses topped with aluminium corrugated sheets.
The cluster of earth-coloured hexagonal brick volumes sits atop a sloping landscape. Their alignments rely on the terrain inclination and rise from the soil by means of large central columns. Echoing the neighbourhood’s colour palette, the adjacent polygons shift from tangerine to red to pink-orange to ochre.
A complex mathematical system, the Voronoi diagrams, has been adopted to arrange the inner gardens containing classrooms and teachers’ rooms, and the outer gardens define the open courtyards as children playgrounds.
By multiplying and rotating, spaces undergo both centrifugal and centripetal forces, bound by diagonal blue-steel frame ramps, which act as gently inclined runways that let the children freely commute back and forth across the hexagons.
Paired with compressions and expansions, the Jardin Infantil Carpinelo is an empathetic manifesto to the young creatures living in it. Often from poorer families, they now have a chance to benefit from an intelligently designed and healthy environment.
Ctrl G Estudio de Arquitectura
ctrlgarquitectos.com
Photography: Sergio Pirrone
sergiopirrone.com
A searchable and comprehensive guide for specifying leading products and their suppliers
Keep up to date with the latest and greatest from our industry BFF's!
The Sub-Zero Wolf showrooms in Sydney and Melbourne provide a creative experience unlike any other. Now showcasing all-new product ranges, the showrooms present a unique perspective on the future of kitchens, homes and lifestyles.
Create a configuration to suit your needs with this curved collection.
In the pursuit of an uplifting synergy between the inner world and the surrounding environment, internationally acclaimed Interior Architect and Designer Lorena Gaxiola transform the vibration of the auspicious number ‘8’ into mesmerising artistry alongside the Feltex design team, brought to you by GH Commercial.
Brisbane’s m3architecture found the University of Queensland’s brutalist School of Architecture building had its problems but also the potential to transform itself and embrace its beautiful landscape.
Caroline Bos, Wolf D. Prix, David Gianotten, Ma Yansong and Winy Maas will all descend on Melbourne at the end of July to present designs for Southbank by Beulah in a public symposium.
The internet never sleeps! Here's the stuff you might have missed
When iconic brands wield their influence, the ripples extend far beyond aesthetics. And so when the MillerKnoll collective formed, the very concept of design shifted, supercharging the industry’s aspiration to create a better world into an unwavering sense of responsibility to do so.
By adding Muuto to its roster as Singapore’s only retailer, XTRA not only celebrates the enduring appeal of Scandinavian design – it heralds a whole new perspective on its universally appealing legacy.