LOCATION Bogotá, Colombia

YEAR 2015

STATUS Competition

PROGRAM Cultural / Institutional -  Competition

DESIGN Carlos Martinez (MEMA) / Carlos Balen (Estudio BAU) /Jose Luis Concha (GRX arquitectos

TEAM Carlos Martinez / Fidel Mendoza / Carlos Balen / Francisco Balen / Jose Luis Concha / Carlos Gor / Alvaro Gor / Agustin Gor Gomez / Juliana Michelsen / Alejandra Rondon / Jaime Ruiz 

COLLABORATORS

ART CONSULTANT: Alejandra Sarrea

INTERNAL CONFLICT EXPERT: Maria Elisa Balen

INTERNAL CONFLICT EXPERT: Sebastian Ronderos

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Colombia is now a country with an internal armed conflict. In search of how to represent the conflict , three guidelines were implemented to the project based on studies of the National Center of Historical Memory: the understanding of the Colombian conflict as a rural conflict in which civil society has been the most affected, the complexity of remembering the victims of a conflict in which there is much disagreement between who are victims and victimizers and the guilt of the actors. And the idea of ​​a museum that can update the speech without losing sight of the objectives of CNMH.

Our starting point is the archetype of the house, home with which we identify all and many yearn to return. Build a national memorial museum to be a house in the city for those who suffered the conflict has a big magnitude in the field, so it is a huge responsibility: the building is not planned to be an imposing and intimidating tower for the people, but something known to invite them to participate in it, creating a monumental museum not in terms of its dimensions but in terms of convergence of important social processes, and the potential reconstruction of a common territory, which it can be understood as a home for all. That is why the concept of the building was based on a horizontal type. Multiplicities of volumes, or houses, evoking the idea of ​​people and likewise the plurality and diversity of their towns. Being a confluence of disparate volumes, the building, rather than being a museum or center, tries to be a space that articulates. The shape of the museum becomes a metaphor for the conflict capable to transcend with the help of its contents of the current Colombian situation. The different volumes representing different sectors of the Colombian population without being specific or any particular area of the country, shows a complex coexistence. The intention of the project is to make visible the heterogeneity of the territory, subjects and stories that can live together.