A City Rises, Along With Its Hopes
(The entrance pavilion to the Botanical Garden in Medellín, Colombia, designed by Lorenzo Castro. Paul Smith for The New York Times)
“What sets Medellín apart is the particular strength of its culture of urbanism, which acts now almost like a civic calling card. The city’s new mayor, Aníbal Gaviria, spent an hour describing to me his dreams for burying a congested highway that runs through the middle of town, building an electric tram along the hillsides to stem the sprawl of the slums, adding a green belt of public buildings along the tram, rehabilitating the Medellín River and densifying the city center — smart, public-spirited, improvements. It’s as if, in this country whose relatively robust economy has underwritten many forward-thinking projects, every mayor here has to have enormous architectural and infrastructural plans, or risk coming across as small-minded or an outsider.” (New York Times)
3 days ago
Lecture by Giancarlo Mazzanti
(Photograph by Iwan Baan)
This Monday, April 16, Colombian architect Giancarlo Mazzanti will lecture in Chicago as part of the exhibition Colombia Transformed organized by the Instituto Cervantes of Chicago in collaboration with MAS Studio.
Vladimir Belogolovsky, founder of the New York-based Intercontinental Curatorial Project and curator of the exhibition, will introduce Giancarlo’s lecture.
The lecture is free and open to the public! More info here.
1 month ago
Colombia: Transformed exhibition
(Orquideorama by Plan:b arquitectos)
If you are in Chicago tomorrow Tuesday, April 3, don’t miss the opening reception for the exhibition “Colombia Transformed” at 6 pm at the Instituto Cervantes. The exhibition is the fourth installment of the Architecture Series organized by the Instituto Cervantes of Chicago in collaboration with MAS Studio and directed by Iker Gil. This exhibition traces ten recently built social projects by five leading voices in contemporary Colombian architecture: Daniel Bonilla and Giancarlo Mazzanti from Bogota, and Felipe Mesa, Juan Manuel Pelaez, and Felipe Uribe from Medellín.
The opening event includes a lecture by David Escobar, the current Planning Department Commissioner of the City of Medellin with an introduction of Fernando Villa, architect and co-curator of the exhibition.
I hope to see you there!
PS: You can get more information about our previous programs here, here and here.
2 months ago
El Bosque de la Esperanza
In a Bogotà favela, a sport center recently completed by Giancarlo Mazzanti represents a project for community and social change. (Domus)
4 months ago
Charlie Rose interviews Sergio Fajardo, former mayor of Medellín, and discusses his ideas and actions to address the social problems that the city faced. He is now running for president of Colombia in 2010.
3 years ago
