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Architectural epistemological categories: An approach to the flexibilization of design thinking

Ángel Ramón Peña Villegas — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 00:00:00 -0500

The creativity is fueled by reasoning; although it cannot be controlled voluntarily, it can be trained with epistemological questions that stimulate cognition. The validation of the projectual process lies in actions that demonstrate coherence between what is thought and what is done. This action awakens ideas stored in memory, apparently forgotten. To enhance the projectual, and its intrinsic creativity, it is necessary to establish cognitive order. Achievable goal by assigning categorical places to knowledge, which will make it easier to remember or activate and associate it. Kuhn speaks of categories of knowledge (1962) to explain the advances in the ways of seeing science and the reality with which it deals. For Kuhn, a paradigm is a conception of reality. If the paradigm is changed, does reality change? Yes. There is no absolute definition for it. We look at reality through particular windows that are then universalized to become cultural premises; commonplaces that allow for argumentation. This is why, within the academic field and transferable to the professional, an approach to projectual reality is proposed from several windows: the complex, the post-structural and the semiotic. Among them, a model is configured that is neither definitive nor exhaustive, but is friendly and flexible to carry out this approach.

Phenomenology and meaning: Toward a sensitive and transformative architecture

Marcelo Alejandro Fraile Narváez — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 00:00:00 -0500

This article presents an in-depth analysis of the need for a sensitive architecture in the contemporary context, using phenomenology as a conceptual tool to challenge the dominant geometric- functional approach. Through case studies, it examines how the integration of sensory and emotional experiences transforms habitable space into a living organism in constant dialogue with its environment and users. The research highlights the relevance of memory, identity, and perception in creating meaningful spaces, promoting an architecture that transcends mere functionality to resonate with human subjectivity.

The CINVA headquarters in the university city of Bogotá: A reading of a manifesto building

Jorge Galindo-Díaz, Camilo Ernesto Mejía — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 00:00:00 -0500

This article describes the conceptual determinants that guided the design and construction of the headquarters building of the Inter-American Housing Center - CINVA, inside the campus of the National University of Colombia, in Bogotá (1953). In the first part, an explanation is made regarding the methodology and the state of the art of related research. Subsequently, the way in which the Center's own activities began and that in the short term would condition its functional program is described, to give way to the story about the genesis of the design with a brief list of those who made up the team in charge. The discussion focuses on the way in which the construction process responded to a series of project premises explicitly described, but which did not have full continuity in the academic training of the Center's scholarship holders. The conclusions seek to highlight the way in which the conjunction of all these aspects allows us to affirm that the CINVA headquarters is a manifest building that served as a reference for a trend of technological exploration in the country during much of the second half of the 20th century.

Urban deficiencies along third street in the city of Ibagué (Colombia)

Thu, 28 Aug 2025 00:00:00 -0500

Urbanism and urban planning are important aspects for the development of cities, as they seek to improve the quality of life of the inhabitants through an efficient and equitable design of urban space. However, in places such as the city of Ibagué, they face constant deficiencies that affect their correct implementation, generating social conflicts from the urban center to the peripheral areas. This article focuses on analyzing how these urbanistic problems have a negative impact on the third race of Ibagué, exploring its causes, consequences, and workable solutions from the architectural point of view. These deficiencies in urban planning will be approached in a descriptive way, highlighting the importance of finding integral solutions to improve the urban quality of citizens and promote an integral development in the musical city.

Case study: a look at informality, highlighting social bonds as a transformative and sustainable tool in Comuna 9, La Pedregosa neigborhood, Bucaramanga, Santander (Colombia)

Fabio Andrés Lizcano Prada — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 00:00:00 -0500

This work seeks to underline the creation of an idea of ideal neighbourhood unity in the city scenario, where a balance between population density and diversity is contemplated, without neglecting the realities of its connectivity, social cohesion and a coherent use of the territory. In particular, the case study manages to define the importance of reading the territory with the social bond in order to determine, through diagnosis, the characteristics of the cultural processes of formation, transformation and consolidation of the informal neighborhood. In general, the process is framed in a methodology that includes a roadmap that establishes how the territory should be shaped, building a strategic plan for sustainable intervention that involves the population within a participatory proposal. Next, the field study recognizes various components that show how the population sculpts an environment made up of a sensitive natural system and a predisposition to change, whether spontaneous or natural. It is here that the analysis of the information allows us to establish criteria to glimpse the interactions between the environment and socioeconomic dynamics, all of them scrutinized from a linear analysis that involves cause-effect-guidelines-strategies. Consequently, the final section exposes the strategies that make up a proposal that manages to bring to the fore the importance of the participatory and inter-institutional process, with a sustainable balance in the physical environment of the city.

Reading the territory in planning processes to safeguard the peri-urban area of the municipal seat of Barichara, Santander (Colombia)

Yolanda Blanco Vesga — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 00:00:00 -0500

The research work from which this article arises seeks to clarify from where a set of answers are generated to unknowns or gaps that must be elucidated to respond to the demands imposed by the safeguarding and conservation of the natural and built heritage found in the peri-urban areas of minor historic centres. In which nature, architecture and urbanism come into play. In this order of ideas, the basic research focused on understanding the current situation of the urban margins of the municipal capital of Barichara (Santander) to undertake the search for a series of strategies aimed at the safeguarding, recovery and development of this third territory without forgetting its historical strengths. The process is based on an approximate approach through in situ work to know and evaluate the territory that borders the old town, a qualitative study that goes from the general to the particular to obtain elements of judgment that support subsequent actions. Next, we move on to a population sampling whose results will be elements of great validity and indispensable to direct the construction of planning guidelines. In the final part of the article, the guidelines that are structured in favor of an organization of the peri-urban territory of Barichara are presented, which, in one way or another, may be analogous to other heritage towns in Colombia.

Reflexiones desde la academia: universidad e investigación

Ivonne Marcella Duque Estupiñan — Tue, 27 May 2025 00:00:00 -0500