Earlier than and After: the Tropicarium of the Bogotá Botanical Backyard

Earlier than and After: the Tropicarium of the Bogotá Botanical Backyard

Nearly a decade in the past, information flooded Colombian media: the announcement of the successful challenge for the Tropicario of the Bogotá Botanical Backyard. At present, we wish to deliver you all the knowledge now we have compiled since then, each concerning the competitors gained by DARP and the development course of – as much as its inauguration in 2021 and its evolution in current occasions.

We hope this architectural journey lets you know each step, each resolution, and each element that contributed to its realization. Understanding that its true legacy lies in the way it transforms lives, evokes communities, and endures over time. 

The Competitors

The decision promoted by the Colombian Society of Architects, on the request of Bogotá Humana, sought to strengthen the position of the Botanical Backyard as a reference in scientific analysis and information administration on ecosystems. Twenty-four proposals have been submitted, of which the jury awarded a primary, second, and third place, in addition to two mentions, specializing in their unity and coherence. The mixing of varied companies right into a single challenge was thought of, taking into consideration the particularities of every one, in addition to its institutional picture and its adaptation to the deliberate city atmosphere.

The jury highlighted the first-place challenge by DARP – Structure and Panorama, a sober challenge that’s “particularly delicate in its implementation, shaping an built-in panorama inside the atmosphere, [in which] it’s articulated with the adjoining moorland and wetland collections of the Backyard by means of the water system.” Moreover, they emphasised that “the spatial end result transforms the constructing right into a transitional house inside the backyard, enabling customers to have a studying and interpretive expertise.”

Development 

Three years after the award, architect Nicolas Valencia talked concerning the development progress with Jorge Buitrago and Jaime Cabal, the challenge’s administrators and co-founders of the Colombian workplace. “The wager was to consider the challenge as a collection of small interconnected landscapes by means of areas configured as synthetic wetlands,” they defined. “It’s a sort of ecosystem that, though not a part of the competitors, has been crucial within the Bogota savanna territory.”

The challenge started development in 2016 and was divided into three phases. The primary part consisted of the development of three constructions that home the collections: Dry Forest, Helpful and Specialised Crops, and Biodiversity. This stage additionally included common basis works, technical areas, and connections with the remainder of the botanical backyard. The second part centered on setting up the most important construction, with round 25 meters excessive, representing the ecosystems of the Choco biogeographic and the Amazon. The final stage was carried out concurrently with the development of the constructions and coated the museography and landscaping improvement of the completely different collections, together with the implantation of vegetation and the incorporation of scenographic components outlined by the Bogota Botanical Backyard.

The Constructing 

Based on the authors, “the conservation of the wax palms that encompass it was decisive, a species declared a nationwide tree, at risk of extinction and with very sluggish progress. These palms stay greater than 100 years, reaching heights of as much as 70 meters. Across the Tropicario, there are greater than 70 palms of this kind in an grownup state. This raised the necessity to use a system of versatile varieties that didn’t have an effect on them.” 

“One other vital situation was the mixing into the construction of the Botanical Backyard and its sturdy instructional and outreach vocation. The Tropicarium is a part of the general backyard tour, and the proposed structure is generated by the act of traversing it, so it couldn’t be conceived as a constructing enclosed by partitions. The guiding query was, ‘How can we relate to the panorama of the Bogotá Savanna?’ This query required the challenge to perform as an area for disseminating and instructing concerning the environmental values and threats confronted by this territory, as a manner of contributing to the native panorama tradition. The response concerned understanding the constructing as a system, interconnected components that kind an entire.” You’ll be able to learn extra concerning the accomplished work on the following hyperlink.

The After 

This 2023, on the event of Worldwide Sustainability Week, we have been invited to the town of Bogotá and didn’t miss the chance to flee to go to the Tropicario of the Botanical Backyard. Visiting a spot stuffed with vegetation and bushes, and witnessing how they bloom and evolve over time, is a testomony to the truth that transformation would not occur in a single day. It additionally speaks volumes about sustainability.

However essentially the most putting factor was the curiosity proven by all of the guests in rigorously exploring this circuit of greenhouses, not solely to find out about every local weather: the tropical rainforest, the dry tropical forest, the superpáramo, the helpful vegetation, and the vegetation for conservation but in addition to be amazed by the immense potential of Colombian structure.