Architecture Classics: Gabriel García Márquez Cultural Center / Rogelio Salmona

Written by Laura Sáenz | Translated by Nicolás Valencia

The Centro Cultural García Márquez is an iconic building located in downtown Bogotá. Its sinuous forms and the dialogue it establishes between time and place are perceptible at various scales. The project was initiated by the Fondo de Cultura Económica de México in 2004 as a cultural contribution by its Colombian branch. Designed by Rogelio Salmona, unfortunately, he passed away in October 2007, a year before its completion in 2008.

Named in honor of the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature Gabriel García Márquez, the project is situated in Bogotá's La Candelaria neighborhood, just one block east of Plaza de Bolívar. This strategic location creates a cultural hub, interconnecting with several neighboring buildings including the Luis Ángel Arango Library, the Banco de la República Museum, 29 university entities, 24 educational institutions, 7 libraries, and a complex of museums and cultural collectives. According to the FCE, it attracts approximately 8,000 users per day.

+ 24

During the colonial period, this property was originally the Claustro de la Enseñanza. In the Republican era, it served as the Palace of Justice. Following the April 9, 1948 disturbances known as the "Bogotazo," the building was utterly destroyed. Later, it was used as a parking lot before being designated as the Cultural Center. The current structure features a 30-meter western facade and extends 80 meters along Calle 11, with a 10% slope that influenced pedestrian access design. The site occupies a total area of 3,200 square meters, with a built area of 9,500 square meters.

With the void taking center stage over the built elements, the architectural design achieves a captivating interplay of levels and subtly intersecting volumes, resulting in an intriguing spatial arrangement. This configuration breaks the spaces dynamically and versatilely, offering multiple possibilities. The initial program includes an art gallery, inaugurated with the exhibition "Mi Gabo del alma" as a tribute to the Colombian Nobel laureate. Additionally, there is a bookstore with a collection of over 80,000 books, two auditoriums—one accommodating 324 people and another dedicated to children—a versatile room, two classrooms for 35 people, a record store, a restaurant, and a café.

The significance of the building in the area goes beyond its activities; it has also contributed to the enhancement of public space, addressing the limited sidewalks in the neighborhood. The building skillfully integrates with pedestrian flows, subtly drawing them inside. It creates a network of routes, extending the experience of the building and offering diverse paths for exploration. The building's permeability fosters visual connections, establishing relationships at both the block and neighborhood scale. It transcends boundaries and invites access, redefining the road profile.

From any vantage point within the project, the interplay of spaces and the dissolution of facades create interstitial areas that invite contemplation of natural elements like the sky and hills. It also offers glimpses of the traditional grid layout that defined Santa Fe de Bogotá, the name given to the Colombian capital during the colonial era.

Furthermore, the immediate facades showcase a diverse range of architectural styles that seamlessly transition into the interior of the building, adding to its captivating charm.

The essence of the project resides in the integration of time as a fundamental construction element. It combines pathways, leisurely experiences, and historical references within the architectural composition. This is achieved through the use of ramps, pavilions, and stratified platforms, evoking the influence of Greek temples in Salmona's work. As Claudia Arcila elaborates in "Salmona and the Poetics of Space":

"The Greek temple, supposed abode of the gods was, with the gaze, the vibrant fullness of the landscape; its greatness consisted in allowing the contemplation of the place and of all places, in a sort of simultaneous vision. So the function of the temple, the essential scope of its art was the revelation of the place" Salmona (Arcila, 2007: 144).

The architect's unwavering pursuit to uncover the essence of a place through the individual's orientation is a key aspect of the volumetric interplay in this unique physical composition. By skillfully delineating the space, the project transcends materiality and embraces simplicity, establishing a profound connection with the surrounding context. This simultaneous visualization of the interior and exterior spaces allows for a harmonious integration with the environment.

For this reason, the García Márquez Cultural Center discovers the shape of La Candelaria through an open space delimited with the minimum amount of elements, where the architectural project, useful until now to provide order to the territory, remains as a vestige of what was once a compact volume" Carlos Figueredo (2013: 209).

Thus, through the succession of horizontal planes, Salmona recurrently employs the stratified platform as a key architectural element. This design choice enables the dissolution of the solid architectural box, creating an opening for contemplation and recognition of the surrounding territory. It captures the pulsations of both the urban and natural landscapes. As a result, the project and the individual become intertwined with the site, engaging with the memories of colonial, republican, and modern architecture. This process, which Salmona termed "resonance," emerges from the very conception of the building, embodying the intentions behind its volumetric design and encompassing over 472 years of Bogotá's history.

In terms of materiality, the Centro Cultural García Márquez achieves a harmonious blend of reinforced concrete in warm sand tones and Santa Fe bricks measuring 6cm x 12cm x 24cm, used for floors and creatively employed in interior enclosures, lattice works, skirting boards, double walls, and jambs. This choice of materials allows the building to seamlessly integrate with its surroundings, mimicking the predominant tones of the environment. Inside, glass and wood finishes enhance the interior spaces, while outside, the experience is complemented by the presence of water mirrors, channels bordering the enclosures, and lush vegetation that drapes from the terrace, cleverly concealing the pavilion roofs.

As for the construction system, it had an isolated footing foundation, combined with tie beams, retaining walls in basements between 3 and 7 meters high. The reinforced concrete structure porticoed on circular columns was complemented with steel; aerial slabs lightened with expanded low-density polystyrene blocks or casings. The roof slab of the auditorium is a circular public plaza 17 meters in diameter between supports, which was resolved through a combined system of full-flange metal profiles, steel sheet, and reinforced concrete, explained Asoconcreto de Colombia.

The García Márquez Cultural Center, Rogelio Salmona's latest work, incorporates elements present in his previous projects into the adaptations of classical architecture with total accord. The user's experience then becomes a leisurely and contemplative wandering in which the resonance emitted by the voids manages to rescue the place for him. In the architect's words, "It is up to architecture to propose spaces that allow time to pass. It is an ethical way of counteracting, of opposing that absurd notion, so deeply rooted in our times, that time is lost. That is why architecture is also memory, because it establishes unequivocally that intimate unity between the individual, space and time" (Arcila, 2007: 152).