Villa Rica, Colombia - 2013

El Guadual (Bamboo Grove) was a 3 year process where community participation was at the Forefront of the design and construction process. The resulting building offers 300 students a center where each student is encouraged to exercise its role as an individual by creating a redundadnt architecture where multiplicity of ways to achieve individual desires forges the individual itself.

A public building where multiple public and semi-private uses mix to create a multi-generational center where culture and education are offered to the entire community makes of El Guaudal a new urban node.

Using a mix of local materials, local construction knowledge, and contemporary applications of the two El Guadual is friendly ecologically and socially. Passive light and ventilation, rain water capture, and permeable grounds present examples to the students and locals on how to affect the local ecology in a positive manner.

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Team: Daniel Feldman, Iván Quiñones, Sandra Pineda, Gabriel Cano, Presidential Advisor for Early Childhood team, Plan Padrino team, Plan Foundation

Centro de Desarrollo Infantil Shipia Touliwou. Uribia, La Guajira.

Shipia Touliwou Early Childhood Development Center. Uribia, La Guajira.

Centro de Desarrollo Infantil Mahanasito Kon Kuturu i Gongotoko en Palenque, Bolivar.

Mahanasito Kon Kuturu i Gongotoko ri Palenque Early Childhood Development Center in Palenque, Bolivar.

Galeras, Colombia - 2015

Galeras is located close to the Caribbean coast. Hot weather and high humidity makes creating passive comfortable spaces a challenge. During the participative design process, community members highlighted how most of the family life happens in the backyard where all that is needed for family activities to happen is generous shade. The center therefore mimics this idea and created a vast concrete slab on columns which allows a continuum of shade where rooms are inscribed within an open Wall system allowing light and air to flow freely and permanently. The slab also negotiates existing trees found on the site in order to preserve them.

The common spaces like dining hall and multipurpose room work as a filter where community activities can happen during off hours as they can open towards the public plaza created in front of the center.

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Daniel Feldman, Iván Quiñones, Sandra Pineda, Gabriel Cano, Andrés Ortega, Eugenio Ortiz

Centro de Desarrollo Infantil Sembrando Semillas de Esperanza. El Tigre, Putumayo.

Planting Seeds of Hope Early Childhood Development Center. El Tigre, Putumayo.

We’Ve Plaza en Central Falls, Rhode Island.

We’Ve [made a] Place in Central Falls, Rhode Island.