Colon Theater extension

Public competition for the extension of the Teatro Colon in Bogotá, Colombia.

The theater is a space where contemporary life is staged. Its diversity of spaces and its simultaneity of uses require situations of flexibility and adaptability. Allowing the interior and its operational structure to resonate with the urban and social richness of the street, is a guarantee of hourly vitality and cultural commitment of the new expansion of the Colón theater, the dignity of heritage and the possibility of appropriation of the historic center of Bogotá.

We start from some clear and stimulating points:

1. Communication of the public between the various streets through a system of courtyards-corridor that would allow access to all the programs of the new Cristóbal Colón Theater from a single point, as well as from independent accesses to each one of them, giving them autonomy of operation.
2. The skyline of the ancient city is complex and varied. The roofs of the Cathedral or religious complexes may be paradigmatic in this regard. The roofs have more of an object profile than a cornice. The project would collect prototypical profiles of the historic center, manipulate, stylize, and compose them in an irregular roof topography.
3. The image is the last essential aspect on which an a priori decision must be made. We believed that it would also be the challenge of the coming years, the dialogue with history from a new position. Responding from a given style or generating a new analog path in this environment of protected areas will be an objective to choose.
4. Allow the spatial management of a single cultural complex or be able to manage the space as several cultural complexes. From the unit to the system and from the system to the unit: where the interstitial spaces of the units are patios, pathways, connections between streets, unexpected passages.
5. The changing sky and the uncertain climate of Bogotá allow countless climatic and metaphysical effects in the same day: heavy rains, soft rains, brilliant sunsets, cloudy skies, heat, cold, reflections, brightness, opacities.

As the cultural spatial complex can acquire a non-specific but contextual materiality from the climatic and meteorological effects on the shapes of the roofs, the various scales and the support materials.