“Colombia is a laboratory of history. Let’s not make it fail.” These were the words of former Uruguayan president “Pepe” Mujica when he visited Colombia in June last year. As a slogan it sounds good, but I think that the statement is imprecise. It is true that Colombia is undergoing a process of peace and reconciliation after an old and complex war, and that Bogotá and Medellín have served as a social and urban laboratory. These two processes, involving country and cities alike, are unavoidable and, in the field of architecture, raise important challenges: what kind of architecture is needed for a post-conflict era? How are we to carry on from what has been built in cities, knowing that ecological crises are beginning to dominate every agenda?
But Colombia, more than a laboratory-country, or a headquarter of professional science or historical analysis, is a territory rich in conjunctures and popular culture, and therefore has a different physiognomy and also a different challenge. It is not the place of conclusions but it can be that of imaginative attempts. Because faced with a society that has been traditionally violent and corrupt, it comes as a surprise to find that its architecture is interesting, its collective intelligence prolific, that a peace agreement was signed or that there are capable governments and councils.
A country like Colombia is not about to light up with discoveries or to celebrate the achievements of its forefathers. Rather it is about to repair what has been broken, tie together things that have fallen asunder, lay hold of what is available, combine useful and old. And the same seems to go for its architecture: the exercise is one not of invention, it is not about something new or unknown. In other words, in Colombia imagination must place itself at the service of adaptation.
Colombia is not a “laboratory of history”, and it is good that it is not; it sounds too pompous and supposes something that we are not—either with our political or social practices, or with our architecture. What Colombia can aspire to be is a field of exploration(1) of the present, of what is happening, of the gerund. Precisely because we are a place where history does not weigh too heavily, where we soon forget and there is no excessive fear of picking things up again, of trying in the now and making unusual combinations. Colombia, though beset by difficulties, is a country that attempts to solve what is urgent and tries to make this effort equivalent to solving what is important. It is this circumstance, I think, that nuances its expression and its architecture.
Although there are in Colombia interesting attempts in many respects, collective and individual efforts in different fields that are worthy of mention, I would like to tell you about a case I am familiar with: that of Archipiélago de arquitectura(2), a group that has been working for ten years or so, bringing together eleven practices in Medellín and Bogotá, their projects compiled in two books: Archipiélago de arquitectura and Teoría de conjunto.