2024 - RAÍCES

Raíces
It is a bi-familiar residential complex. Located in Bogota Colombia: in the Usme location. The plot where the project is is in the southeast of the historical center, on La Requilina sidewalk. It is a rural-urban limit. It has some natural visuals and relations with an urban environment, designing the project according to cold weather.
The relationship with the indigenous past of the Muisca community and their ancestral history has strengthened. At the same time, the project works with light towers to give a secure and comfortable environment.
The project counts on commemorative elements that try to beef up cultural identity and create places with communal interaction using light as the protagonist. From its materiality and design, it is evident those relations. Raices count with a six-bi-familiar house distribution, where its semicircle shape and lattice usage inspired by the fique-brained (material used in the wall design of Muisca’s houses (Choza)) allows to generate a fluid and calm environment.
In the complex route, you can find the light towers called Pqihiza (Muisca’s word that means radiance). They work with solar panels and create a secure and comfortable place for the residents, lighting the nocturn path.
According to materials, each house is built of concrete with mud coating, which represents a rustic and traditional style and thermal comfort. The skylight usage will allow cover and take advantage of light direction in the roof and how inside the house it gets involved. We decided on a specific distribution that shows shadows in each house, which produces a constant experience according to the sun’s position.
Each living place uses a semicircle shape, adding one rectangle on each side. The semicircle shape takes inspiration from Muisca’s Chozas (constructions of a domestic, spiritual, or cultural nature, built by indigenous groups in the precolombinan epoch). In these groups they used to locate the Choza according to sunrise, where the frontal and entrance door will be in the east direction, representing reborn and life. The rectangles are used for a functional design with a better inside organization and how the light gets involved in some places.
Most of Colombia is in the Tropic of Capricorn, with variation in its weather according to the altitude. Therefore, most of the year, we receive direct solar light.
All six houses are directed to the east direction, with no rotation. The purpose is to take advantage of all the daylight in the sunrise at the door entrance, and the back part is directed to the west and is connected with the sunset, creating textures with the lattice part.
Part of the project concept is to create a calm and relaxed place mixed with earth tones that create warm feelings and atmosphere. The paths that surround the complex connect the houses and get inspired by a tree’s branches, giving a natural and rural sensation. These paths match with the lattice that is in the outline of the exterior backyard of each living place. This backyard in each house is a shared place. Each house has two floors. In the first one, you can find the kitchen, dining room, living room, one middle bathroom, laundry area, the backyard, and in the middle, a crystal wall will illuminate the house. On the second floor, you can find the main room, with the private bathroom and the balcony, two more rooms, and the other bathroom.
In the courtyard area, the lattice represents the walls made of fique. Within this design, the straightest part of the lattice is more abundant than the circular part which is in the west. In this way, reflecting how to open at sunset and through this represent community, the union of sharing and growth with others. Also, using the lattice allows shadows to work with its texture. In the front facade, the project has a window where the lattice will work too.
Among the interrelation forms, the project has the extraction in the semicircle and the middle part. The addition of the two rectangles and the interrelation between the elements. The hierarchy where the semicircle is the most important element in the design. All the project works around a symmetrical line with symmetrical elements.
Finally, the kind of users that could live here is related to the adults and children population. Near the plot is a Primary school that could help and be effective for the child population that lives in the complex. In general, it is for everyone.