Fábrica de Cultura School of Arts and Popular Traditions / ETH Zurich + Universidad del Norte de Barranquilla (UniNorte)

Architects:ETH Zurich,Universidad del Norte de Barranquilla (UniNorte)

Area:11500m²

Year:2022

Photographs:Copyright Klumpner Chair of Architecture and Urban Design ETHZ / Alejandro Arango and Luis Bernardo Cano

Manufacturers:Hunter Douglas

Lead Architects:Hubert Klumpner, Diego Ceresuela, Manuel Moreno, Sergio Chirivella (with A. Brillembourg hasta Feb. 2019)

Design :ETH Zurich – D-ARCH Cátedra de Arquitectura y Diseño Urbano / Universidad del Norte de Barranquilla (UniNorte)

Design Team:Pablo Levine, Blanca García-Gardelegui, Alejandro Jaramillo, Michael Walczak, Klearjos Eduardo Papanicolaou, Cristian Zabalaga, Lucas Lerchs, Ursina Roffler, Diogo Figueiredo, Lea Rüfenacht (Coord. Fase 1), Marie Grob, Sofia Avramopoulou, María Paula Celia, Melanie Imfeld

Graphic Design:Ruedi & Vera Baur

Eth Zurich Consultants:D-ARCH ITA SUAT, D-ARCH BLOCK RESEARCH GROUP (BRG), D-ARCH ITA Information Architecture

Development And Engineering:Fabián Amaya, Ricardo Vives, Guiselle García, Sharik Pereira, Sharon Pico

Structural Engineers:Andrés Guzmán, Osvaldo Guzmán

Mechanical Engineers:Antonio Bula, José Solano

Electrical Engineers:Daniel Soto, Rafael de Jesús

Communications:Lácides Ripoll

Installations:Augusto Sisa

Transport & Traffic Consultant:Victor Cantillo, Boris Goenaga

Cost Consultant:Luis Villadiego

City:Barranquilla

Country:Colombia

Text description provided by the architects. The Fábrica de Cultura: School of Arts and Popular Traditions complex in Barrio Abajo, a working-class neighborhood in Barranquilla, Colombia, is built into an abandoned Tobacco Factory, adding a new building and offering a public square for the Barrio.

Located at the Caribbean coast, the Fábrica provides a ‘maker space’ for 2800 young people to learn creative arts and popular traditions centered around the culture of the UNESCO World Heritage Carnival of Barranquilla. Operated by the Municipality, the facility offers arts and crafts education in - 11 disciplines music, dance, sculpture, dressmaking, painting poetry, theater, food production, digital film, and audio techniques - to local residents, regardless of their social or economic background.

The design builds on vernacular patterns, behaviors, and phenomena, utilizing local materials and processes and fabrication providing open building principles establishing a creative framework of stacked covered and uncovered spaces that can be modified and reprogrammed by users over time. Fábrica de Cultura offers a flexible building prototype that is being replicated in other parts of Barranquilla and Colombia as a whole using popular arts and culture as a strategy for inclusion throughout the region.

The Fábrica de Cultura is part of the larger Colombia Urban Transformation Program, a collaboration between the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), among others. The drawings and models for the project were shown at the 17th International Architecture Biennale in Venice 2021.

Project gallery

Project location

Address:Barranquilla, Atlantico, Colombia