University City of Bogotá - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The University City of Bogotá , also known as the White City , is the flagship campus of the National University of Colombia

National University of Colombia

The Universidad Nacional de Colombia , also called UNAL or just UN, is a public, national, coeducational, research university, located primarily in Bogotá, Medellín, Manizales and Palmira, Colombia...

, located near Teusaquillo

Teusaquillo

Teusaquillo is the 13th locality of Bogotá, capital of Colombia. It is located in the geographic center of the city, to the northwest of downtown. It is an urbanized locality with several green zones in its parks, avenues, and the campus of the National University of Colombia...

, in Bogotá

Bogotá

Bogotá, Distrito Capital , from 1991 to 2000 called Santa Fé de Bogotá, is the capital, and largest city, of Colombia. It is also designated by the national constitution as the capital of the department of Cundinamarca, even though the city of Bogotá now comprises an independent Capital district...

, Colombia

Colombia

Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...

. It is the largest university campus in Colombia, with an overall area of 1200000 m² (296.5 acre) and a constructed area of 308541 m² (76.2 acre), giving it ample green areas, open spaces, and pedestrian paths. Amongst its buildings are seventeen that have been declared national monuments; these constitute a cross section of the last 60 years of Colombian architecture

Architecture

Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...

.

The University City Rafael Uribe began when Alfonso López Pumarejo

Alfonso López Pumarejo

Alfonso López Pumarejo was a two-time Colombian president and political figure, as a member of the Colombian Liberal Party. He served as president of Colombia for the first time between 1934 and 1938 and again between 1942 and 1945....

, in his first term of office as president of the country, envisioned the National University of Colombia as a modern, evolutionary, and experimental infrastructure including a balance of science and arts. The University City in Bogotá of National University of Colombia

National University of Colombia

may be viewed as an example of the architectonic expression of the modernization of the State from 1930 to the present time.

By virtue of law 68, enacted in 1935, it was made the National University of Colombia, an independent organization which opened education to a wider cross section of the population. This new broader view of education, the educational and administrative structure of the University City of Bogotá, its place in the state and its architecture had to reflect, in their respective scopes, the spirit of modernization on which the country was based. The state granted lands to the future university which were west of the city at the time, intending to stimulate the urban development of that zone. This plan succeeded to the point that, in 2006, the National University in its campus of Bogotá is considered both central and easily accessible.

To design the university, which had until then distributed academic functions across scattered locations throughout Bogotá

Bogotá

and to different governmental organizations, the national government invited architect Fritz Karsen, expert in university subjects, and the architect Leopold Rother

Leopold Rother

Leopold Siegfried Rother Cuhn was a German architect, urban planner and educator. He developed important projects particularly in Colombia. The most known project was the design of the Campus of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá.- External links : - Biography...

to come assist them. Karsen defined and integrated an academic structure in an ellipse form from which radiated the five great academic divisions and his respective dependencies. The scheme was translated by Rother into the proposed space distribution for the in a "puristic cubism" style, but with some characteristics of the seat of the famous school of Bauhaus

Bauhaus

', commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term stood for "School of Building".The Bauhaus school was founded by...

, in Dessau

Dessau

Dessau is a town in Germany on the junction of the rivers Mulde and Elbe, in the Bundesland of Saxony-Anhalt. Since 1 July 2007, it is part of the merged town Dessau-Roßlau. Population of Dessau proper: 77,973 .-Geography:...

(Germany), with a prismatic volumetry, white and austere.

The space distribution offered the concept of "campus" for the first time in Colombia, where all the required buildings are scattered through green zones for relaxation, integrated with one another and connected by footpaths through the campus and two roads around the perimeter. Architects the Office of National Buildings of the Public Work Ministry, the Colombian organization in charge of the design and construction of the national administrative buildings, assisted Karsen and Rother in designing the campus.

The composition of plants and facades with tendency to the asymmetry, the handling of new materials and new constructive techniques are, in synthesis, the elements that served as foundation the design. The constructions of the University City followed, in general terms, although the symmetrical composition in the space distribution of some buildings and the use of traditional constructive systems in others is well-known. The use of stucco and white paint earned the campus the name of "White City".

The work of architect Leopold Rother

Leopold Rother

is remarkable in that, in addition to participating in the initial planning stages of the campus, designed several specific buildings: the stage Alfonso Lopez (1937), the administrative offices (1937), porters' lodges at the entrances of streets 26 and 45 (1937), faculty housing (1939), research laboratories (1940), the engineering building, in conjunction withwith Bruno Violi (1940), and the press (1945). Rother stayed in the country as a teacher and influenced several generations of architects formed in the newly created Faculty of Architecture of the University. Of the initial buildings, the set of veterinary medicine and the faculty of architecture, both designed by Erik Lange and Ernesto Blumenthal (1938), the faculty of Alberto Wills Ferro (1940) and the student residences of Julio Bonilla are due to Silver's emphasis (1939 and 1940) and have been declared National Monuments.

The University City, in its design and construction, has furthered acceptance of modern architectonic language and its condition of paradigm and is considered one of the ten most important works of the century, in Colombia.

External links

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