I am Laura Alejandra Hernández Pineda, I live in Bogotá, Colombia, city where I currently practice my career as an architect. I studied at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, I developed great interest in urban planning, in the second part of the career where as a learning method we studied the city from the palimpsest, being the city the conformation of multiple layers, with a diversity of dynamics that have been overlapping, articulating and replacing each other.
The objective in my professional training is to experiment with architecture from multiple scales, understanding the impact of architectural and urban pieces on social dynamics, the evolution of cities tied to technology and sustainability. The creation of tools that allow citizens to conceptualize and transform the spaces they inhabit and how to develop them so that the communities are the main protagonists and observers of their evolution.
In this portfolio you will find two significant projects in my career on an urban scale, also a competition in Thessaloniki, Greece. I have selected them for the methodology in which they were developed, capturing the urban interventions from an eclectic atlas and the new paradigms that are being implemented in the transformation of cities.
BOGOTÁ Nieves neghtiborhood
BOGOTÁ Jaboque wetland THESSALONIKI
URBAN REGENERATION
LAS NIEVES, BOGOTÁ
SITE
26 Street
19 Street
Jiménez Avenue
STUDY AREA
Santa Fé District
Nieves
PROBLEM STATEMENT
Las Nieves sector is understood from its planning as an isolated part of Bogota’ s downtown, in the middle of two sectors with strong urban dynamics, such as the international center and the foundational center.
International Center
Foundation Center
International Center
Las Nieves
Foundation Center
Hierarchy of business centers
Isolated pieces of great importance.
Attractive areas for tourism.
Public spaces related to their environment.
Introverted structures.
The sector operates as an organized whole. Deterioration factors.
Recovery towards tourism consumption.
Public spaces related to their environment.
Analytical layers Stripes
The diagnosis is developed by superimposing four characteristic layers of the sector, evaluating the tension generated between them and their effects.
As a result, there are three physical strips with different behaviors, the limits of which are invisible, represented by the streets. strips
Through a process of analysis by scales, an urban component is read as a fragmented piece.
Activities are the main catalyst for development or deterioration in the sector; their location, their grouping logic and the tensions they generate on the real estate and the urban system make it possible to identify the pros and cons they “bring” to the sector.
Architecture
The architecture is the main support of activities, it manages a reciprocal relationship with these, since its specialty and physical state are conditioned by the type of activity that is implanted in it.
Sripe A
The buildings of the Jorge Tadeo Lozano and Central universities stand out, manifesting intrinsic urban configurations in the block where they are located, the alterations they generate around them are a response to the flows made by a floating population.
Sripe B
There are devices of cultural character, complemented by the agglomeration of buildings declared BIC (Bien de Interés Cultural) - Heritage architecture in the sector, its morphology allows greater relationship with the street.
Sripe C
The buildings of the Jorge Tadeo Lozano and Central universities stand out, manifesting intrinsic urban configurations in the block where they are located, the alterations they generate around them are a response to the flows made by a floating population.
Impressive architecture:
buildings
Physical limit due to high density of constructions.
Introverted block, low density of buildings. High density, little architectural value.
Las Nieves square
Permeable pieces.
Colpatria Tower
Las Nieves Market Square
SITE DIAGNOSIS
1 2 3 4
Blocks with this demeanor: 1 - 20 Enclosed
It eliminates all urban value, there are no relationships between the built and the street, it creates spaces of insecurity and divergent activities.
Fragmented 1 (Uncompleted):
Implantation of buildings that break with the scale in height, high construction index. The block has the potential for transformation, allowing the articulation of its component parts.
Blocks with this demeanor: 2 – 21 – 6 – 23 – 14
Isolated devices + values in the urban landscape:
There are buildings (facilities) of high architectural value and population attractor, with potential activation on urban voids.
Blocks with this demeanor: 15
Building obsolescence:
Buildings with loss of functionality and attractiveness. - Dull space in an urban environment.
Blocks with this demeanor: 22 – 29 – 32 – 33
Blocks with this demeanor: 4 Consolidated: 5
Value in the state of the architecture, in the activities that are generated and space with location.
Disintegrated: 6
It has lost its component parts over time, leaving isolated patches.
Blocks with this demeanor: 5 – 9
Heterogeneous: 7
Aesthetically, functionally and historically valued pieces, the diversity of the block makes it a potential.
Blocks with this demeanor: 16 - 17
Compact: 8
High building density, low permeability, lack of typological identity due to the high degree of modification in the buildings.
Blocks with this demeanor:
Blocks with this demeanor: 7 – 27 Public space programmed: 9
The public space is the main piece of the block, the surrounding buildings allow greater activity and use of this support, the composition of the block is clear.
MASTER PLAN
Urban Regeneration
A system of public spaces intertwined by the street is proposed, being the protagonists of the different types of intervention strategies, the buildings are understood as permeable activity container devices in their second floors, generating circuits that pass through the entire sector.
The recovery of environmental values allows a balance with the high density of constructions, and also improves the conditions of habitability and urban landscape, being an attraction for the proposed routes.
The implantations promote urban safety values, due to the constant activity that can be developed in its spaces.
Heritage buildings
Public Space Network
Outline of proposed new typologies
Vegetation infiltration
Tactical urban planning intervention
Strategies
With the intervention of urban pieces, the objective is to articulate the sector, implementing programmatic devices directly related to public spaces of different scales.
INSERT ADAPT
New typologies that respond to the architectural language of the sector, providing new values and the recovery of abandoned areas.
Re-structuring of urban pieces so that they respond to the identification of buildings with architectural and historical values, promoting their recovery.
Spaces that promote recreation and recognition of the population, sensorially pleasing that form a network of activities within the sector.
Spaces that present conditions and potential for the insertion of new architectural and activity scales.
FLOWS
Improve internal circulation conditions in the sector, configuring existing voids within the blocks.
All the structure of the buildings with limited use in their second floors, being elements with an architectural value for its clear reading and trace of moments of urban development.
Pedestrian areas
20th Street
21th Street
Permeable spaces
Housing value recovery
Tactical areas in public space identification
The intervention focuses on the current and future resident population, through strategies for the implementation of new high-rise typologies that allow for greater programmatic flexibility.
The 20th Street axis is the triggering piece of this development, its current state encourages the recovery of existing elements thanks to the urban flexibility it supports, being its strategic location for high-rise developments that are articulated to public activity spaces.
South side 20th Street
North side 20th Street
CULTURAL NETWORK
22th Street
It focuses on the potential of existing cultural activities, through the configuration of urban voids whose location becomes strategic as they are physically related to facilities of great architectural and cultural value.
The proposal seeks the creation of spaces that provide sensitivity to the sector, with the help of landscaping elements, diversity of activities that allow the perception of greater urban security.
South side 22th Street
North side 22th Street
FACILITIES CONSOLIDATION
24th Street
South side 24th Street
On this axis, the implementation of large-scale public buildings is proposed, generating a balance of urban supports and the creation of effective public spaces that activate them.
North side 24th Street
RESTITUTION OF ENDOWMENT PROGRAMMED ALLEYS
Collective facilities for social integration: The proposed facilities will be based on the diversity of services they can provide to the sector’s inhabitants.
Cultural and educational facilities will be strengthened through new structures that expand their program. For the most part, the scale of implementation will be punctual, located on the second floors of the proposed high-rise buildings.
The structures that comply with a larger scale will be located at different points in the neighborhood, promoting circuits and routes around them.
strategies are proposed to respond to different types of circulation, but mainly to improve pedestrian circulation conditions, transforming the street into an extension of the cultural facilities located on it.
HERITAGE RESTORATION ACTIVE BORDERS
After the constant transformations of the sector, and the potential for intervention on the block where the market square is located, it is proposed to expand it by changing the property pattern to promote new services and better marketing conditions, as well as to consolidate the market square as one of the most important facilities in the sector.
The implementation of pieces that respond to an urban activity promotes the recovery of forgotten and neglected areas in the sector.
URBAN ACTIVATION
JABOQUE WETLAND, BOGOTÁ
SITE
72th Street
Juan Amarillo Wetland Site
International Airport El Dorado
Teamwork with Angélica Córdoba and Juan Manuel Cruz.
The Jaboque wetland is part of a network of wetlands and environmental systems in the Bogotá savannah, this network is started by rivers that flow down from the eastern hills and reach the Bogotá River, a natural element that over the years has suffered the consequences of contamination by the excessive growth of the city.
Street No. 72 is identified as a strong commercial and real estate development axis, as this street is located in the sector it becomes one of the main routes of mobility of the population to other sectors of the city, being an axis of great dependence for the territory.
Engativa District
Engativa District
PROBLEM STATEMENT
The sector can be read as a peninsular territory where the wetland functions as a physical and programmatic limit, characterizing an introverted sector with little sense of belonging to a natural structure as strong as the Jaboque wetland.
1954 - 1972: ARTICULATION WITH THE CITY 1972-2000: RESIDENTIAL EXPANSION
2000 - 2016: FUNCTIONAL DIFFERENTIATION
72th Steet (Av. Chile)
Las Ferias
París Gaítán
El Real
80th Street
(Av. Medellín)
80th Street (Av. Medellín) Legal self-construction
Informal Origen Private Developers
Boyacá Aveue
72th Steet
(Av. Chile)
72th Steet
(Av. Chile)
Av. Ciudad de Cali
Proyecto Av. Longitudinal de Occidente Av. Boyacá Microcentralities
Metacity Datatown
Metacity helps us to quantify and categorize important elements of the sector under study such as: free land, residential, commercial and public spaces, in order to have a more objective view of present and missing elements in the sector. It also allows us to observe, through the statistical exploitation of data, the inequity between the deficit of public land in relation to the number of inhabitants and with respect to the ideal indicators for each category analyzed.
SITE DIAGNOSIS
An encapsulated sector with introverted activities is identified, denying the environmental value of the wetland in such a way that they act in favor of its contamination. There are strong commercial axes, which are active at different times of the year, giving the sector greater urban dynamics.
Spatial Divergences Program Units Invasion by productive tissue
Public spaces that have been enclosed as the constructive consolidation of the sector has turned them into semiprivate sectors.
Improvised schools in residential structures whose technical characteristics do not match the needs of an educational facility, and their activities expand to nearby public spaces.
Public spaces that have been enclosed as the constructive consolidation of the sector has turned them into semiprivate sectors.
Those buildings whose functional structure was designed for both public and private schools, have the characteristic of being isolated from the street space and develop their school activities inside their facilities.
On high traffic roads, there are businesses that are gradually absorbing the buildings on the street; this commerce has a high level of activity in different seasons, but the market dynamics of the street is the result of its invasion.
Progressive consolidation housing that grows in buildability to increase its profitability.
MASTER PLAN
Connecting urban structures
Expansion of the coverage of facilities
The proposal focuses on locating key devices in the sector, so that they play the role of catalysts and through the intervention of these spaces generate a wave of activation in adjacent areas. Create a network of effective public spaces and streets that articulate the sector, focusing on the recovery and restitution of the Jaboque wetland.
Active block edge Adaptive public spaces
Strengthening of economic, social, cultural and environmental dynamics Treatment on the wetland’s edge, new areas of effective public space, with strips of soft areas articulated to squares that share activities between housing, a hybrid equipment (education and culture) and commercial areas.
The platform is adapted to separate soft and hard areas. Arborization, lighting and urban furniture.
Increase the area of the current public parks allowing new activities that change according to seasonality.
Attract
Reinforce
Hybridize
Hybridize
Configure
Configure
Activation of ineffective spaces
Treatment of the wetland’s edge, new areas of effective public space, with strips of soft areas articulated with squares that share activities between housing, a hybrid facility (education and culture) and commercial areas.
The Nolli plan of the proposal allows us to illustrate the new permeable language of the territory, where the buildings near the wetland will fulfill a public function, inside the territory a commercial network of multiple scales is structured, giving participation to housing as active architectures and articulated to public spaces.
The sector is read as a complex territory, but as a whole, which will continue to change constantly under precise guidelines that allow for a better quality of living for the users.
Attract
Configure
Reinforce
Modular
Ecological border recovery
Based on social strategies where the community identifies the importance of the ecological structure represented by the Jaboque wetland, programmatic devices are implemented to attract activities aimed at the development of the sector.
Hybrid facilities aimed at different types of populations that can operate in different seasons, articulated with public spaces for contemplation, landscaping is an element that adds value through the recovery of the wetland ecosystem, creating spaces for fauna and flora.
Programmatic Interstices
The objective is the structuring of public facilities strategically located in parks, squares and pedestrian malls, allowing easy accessibility and responding to the needs of the population from a sense of social interaction. The facilities are diversified from education, culture and recreation, so that they are built supports for the encounter between people and develop a concept of community to allow the balance of the territory as a whole public sector (city) and population.
In the same way, the network responds to multiple scales, first by the organized location on the territory, which allows the outside population to physically access in a feasible way, both pedestrian and vehicular, and secondly because it becomes attractive spaces, where greater relationships and dynamics converge and contribute to the physical and social development of the sector.
THE CITY AS A FACILITY
Public Space, Boulevard and Bridge for Expo 2023
BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA
Work with Caster Architects
MALBA
Acceso Oeste
Panamericana
MASTER PLAN
Public Space, Boulevard and Bridge for Expo 2023
The competition proposed the recycling of a large area called Technopolis for the implementation of new devices programmed to host activities of future fairs.
In the proposal, the territory was studied using strategies to locate points of influence for the exhibition circuit at the fair. This sweep identifies a natural element that has been left behind and has presented deterioration such as the lake, a key piece of recovery and integration in front of the public use spaces.
The sector was divided into three quadrants articulated by strips of circulations that lead to the plazas with different programmatic exhibitions. Two large-scale devices are arranged, which are the circular bridge at the entrance of the sector and the open-air auditorium, located at the end of the linear circulation, these two devices generate a tension of circulation that together with the vegetation and landscaping tie the whole proposal.
Multipurpose areas
The squares function as polyvalent supports, ready for constant transformations through the devices they implement, which can change according to the activity and temporality.
Programmatic platform 1
The walkways are integrated into the lake by means of a system of pixel quadrants that disintegrate as they enter the lake and in specific areas create platforms for the benefit of activities adaptable to this natural element.
Programmatic platform 2
The squares have a support function, integrated to technical structures that allow the implementation of different devices.
platform 3
Landscaping is characterized as a harmonious but functional element, determining and classifying spaces according to their layout and type of vegetation.
Programmatic
Central Business District of Thessaloniki
SITE
Project designed by Caster Architects
26is Oktovriou
Thessaloniki Railway track
MASTER PLAN
The squares function as polyvalent supports, ready for constant transformations through the devices they implement, which can change according to the activity and temporality.
