Detail of the project ed. 2024

alham­bras-cross / Colombia

Design­er	Ale­jan­dro Saldarriaga
Loca­tion	Bogotá, Colom­bia
Nation	Colom­bia
Design Team	Pri­ma­ry Authors: Ale­jan­dro Sal­dar­ria­ga Rubio (Alsar-Ate­li­er), Ger­man Baha­mon (GB Urban Studio) Con­tribut­ing Authors: Name: Colom­bian Soci­ety of Architects Role: Fundraising Name: Equinorte S.A.S Role: Loan of form­work sys­tem + dona­tion of white paintjob
Year	2021
Pho­to credits	Alber­to Roa Pho­tog­ra­phy _ All Files

Pho­to external

Project descrip­tion

Con­text:

In March 2020, the cit­i­zens of Bogotá saw them­selves fac­ing the upcom­ing Holy Week cel­e­bra­tions in pan­dem­ic iso­la­tion. While usu­al­ly not con­sid­ered an issue of impor­tance due to the socio-cul­­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance of the catholic faith with­in the Latin Amer­i­can con­text, the senior com­mu­ni­ty of the Alham­bra Neigh­bor­hood saw this as an adverse restric­tion on their routines. 

For elder­ly cit­i­zens, rou­tine­ly attend­ing mass is not only a mat­ter of faith but also of social­iza­tion with their com­mu­ni­ty and strength­en­ing their men­tal health. As such, the com­mu­ni­ty and the local church had start­ed to take over a gro­cery store park­ing lot to con­duct mass­es with noth­ing more than plas­tic chairs and a megaphone. 

As Holy Week is when the most impor­tant year­ly catholic cel­e­bra­tions take place, Alsar-Ate­li­er, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Ger­man Baha­mon and the Colom­bian Soci­ety of Archi­tects, approached the senior com­mu­ni­ty of the Alham­bra neigh­bor­hood with the intent of donat­ing an open-air tem­po­rary chapel.

Objec­tive:

The main objec­tive of the design was to help senior cit­i­zens adapt to the pan­dem­ic real­i­ty with­out restrict­ing their leisure, espe­cial­ly in times of iso­la­tion. As the project came to fruition, the design team asked the gro­cery store park­ing lot own­ers if it was pos­si­ble to use their space to install a tem­po­rary prayer space. They respond­ed that they were only will­ing to donate a por­tion of their area for said chapel for only four days, lead­ing to a con­di­tion of acute ephemer­al­i­ty that was cru­cial in defin­ing the proposal. 

Addi­tion­al­ly, the project need­ed to host a com­mu­ni­ty of 80 senior cit­i­zens under a min­i­mum of 300 sqm and ref­er­ence ele­ments of clas­si­cal catholic archi­tec­ture with­in the final com­po­si­tion, per request of the clients, with essen­tial­ly no funds to finance the project. 

These seem­ing­ly impos­si­ble project con­di­tions led to the reuse of the hor­i­zon­tal form­work sys­tem, the rudi­men­ta­ry mod­u­lar struc­tures used to cast con­crete slabs in the glob­al south. The process need­ed to cast con­crete slabs requires the cre­ation of a large inhab­it­able struc­ture with quick assem­bly and dis­as­sem­bly, mak­ing said sys­tem an ide­al com­po­si­tion­al mate­r­i­al for the chapel’s design, as it shared the same con­di­tions of ephemer­al­i­ty and eco­nom­ic acces­si­bil­i­ty. At this point in the process, Equinorte S.A.S, a com­pa­ny that loans out con­struc­tion infra­struc­ture, joined the team and agreed to donate the mate­r­i­al need­ed to con­struct the design.

Per­for­mance:

Alhambra’s Cross is a project that trans­formed a park­ing lot into a catholic tem­ple by reusing rudi­men­ta­ry con­struc­tive infra­struc­tures. The hor­i­zon­tal formwork’s orthog­o­nal mod­u­lar­i­ty and struc­tur­al require­ments led to a nov­el “sol­id vs void” Greek cross plan that deeply res­onat­ed with the struc­tures of clas­si­cal catholic archi­tec­ture. Fur­ther­more, by paint­ing the hor­i­zon­tal form­work white, the indus­tri­al for­mal prop­er­ties of the adjustable posts, crossheads, and rebar truss­es were trans­formed into orna­men­tal archi­tec­tur­al ele­ments. The meta­mor­phoses of said fru­gal ele­ments into a colon­nade that res­onat­ed with sacred archi­tec­ture makes the design an exem­plary exper­i­ment behind the poten­tial of low-cost tectonics.

The chapel had max­i­mum occu­pan­cy for the three cel­e­bra­tion dates of the holy week, It was high­ly pop­u­lar amongst the local and adjoin­ing neigh­bor­hood res­i­dents, who were keen to vis­it the project—successfully restor­ing a leisure­ly rou­tine amongst the senior com­mu­ni­ty of the Alham­bra neigh­bor­hood. More­over, as the mate­r­i­al upcy­cled an exist­ing con­struc­tion sys­tem, the struc­ture returned to its orig­i­nal use after dis­as­sem­bly, avoid­ing the typ­i­cal gen­er­a­tion of waste present in ephemer­al architecture. 

The project is exem­plary of the val­ue of need-based ephemer­al archi­tec­ture and, as a result, has been wide­ly pub­lished in diverse archi­tec­ture media, includ­ing NYC’s Metrop­o­lis mag­a­zine, the Novem­ber 2023 print­ed issue of DOMUS, and was recenl­ty nom­i­nat­ed for the Mies Crown Hall Amer­i­c­as Prize (MCHAP) Cycle 5 .

Explana­to­ry report of the project
Down­load report

Pho­to internal

Tech­ni­cal drawings

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