Papi Quiero Piña is a place embedded in the minds of Bucaramanga and Santander inhabitants. Its name comes from a little kiosk named “Pare Papi Quiero Piña” on the highway from Bucaramanga to Piedecuesta. Even now, as the emblematic booth and sign no longer exist, demolished to make way for the new interchange over the highway and never restored, it remains a landmark. Questions arise: What type of architecture fits here? and How can architecture recover a place that is no longer what it used to be and is now merely a layering of unresolved problems?

Passing through, the panorama is made up of a highway with a section of over fifty meters; atop there’s a pedestrian bridge scarcely connected for pedestrians, causing them to take the same route as the cars do in the interchange; a sidewalk in precarious conditions, which due to its own limitations causes people to wait for the buses invading the highway lanes; an abandoned public transportation portal of which only a part of the structure remains; and a cement factory that contributes to the pollution of the creek. The image of Papi Quiero Piña is not the tall trees or the creek passing beneath the highway. In this city - common case in Latin America - there is an overvaluation of road infrastructure over any other system or equipment in the city, whether public space, facilities, or ecological infrastructure.

Papi Quiero Piña is, today, a dichotomous space where the constructed abruptly and harshly encounters the natural with the people who inhabit the place. Nevertheless, it is the entrance to Bucaramanga, located on the highway coming from the south of the country. This place is the point where decisions are made about which direction to take: to reach Bucaramanga, or to take the road towards Cúcuta, the Caribbean coast, or Girón, then the airport.

The first response to addressing a possible solution to the problems in Papi Quiero Piña is to propose a matrix based on compositional systems - points (towers), lines (bars), and planes (surfaces on the ground) - in which each has a responsibility. Likewise, interruptions are proposed within that system, meaning a crossing of responsibilities. Iterations are tested as a system, each one can function as a possible project as well as combined with each other. From this process, more questions arise: What type of architecture can create a continuity of ecological infrastructure, i.e., reconnecting what has been broken by road infrastructure, and also managing to connect urban patches, maintaining road infrastructure and creating a gateway to the city on a scale appropriate to its magnitude?

The aim for this project is to propose an architecture that responds to the greatest number of problems through a combination of components that create different relationships and reconnections. The project is implemented as an additional layer within this layering of infrastructures: the infrastructure building.

The urban gesture is an elevated building that crosses the highway and a part of the road interchange, reconnecting that ecological infrastructure and the urban patches through an elevated linear park that allows for the conservation and study of native and endangered species.

The project is composed of a tower and a bar. The bar is what creates connections between the patches; it has perforations that allow the passage of light to the elevated first floor, where a botanical research center is proposed, or to the ground in the case of larger perforations. The bar ends in ramps that connect to the north, with the abandoned structure, now proposed as a park, connected with an underground market; and to the south, with the opposite side of the "terminalito," that is, where passengers arrive when entering the city.

For the tower, a monolith divided into 4 parts is proposed; the first connects to the research center and the linear park, allowing continuity between the bars; the following parts are temporary housing for short and long stays. Vertical gardens are proposed in the voids as common areas for temporary housing, thus allowing for the continuity of ecological infrastructure both horizontally - the bar - and vertically - the tower. The tower, 200 meters high, marks the entrance and exit of the urban area of Floridablanca-Bucaramanga, referencing it, even from kilometers away from the city.

More than conclusions, the project opens up questions and a proposal for a recharacterization of Papi Quiero Piña, both vertically and horizontally. It attempts to answer the question: What architecture fits in a place where the name is everything?

2023

The project's structure is a combination of various structural systems. The tower includes a central concrete core where services and vertical circulations are located. Each section of the tower is connected to the core by a truss beam from its top floor, with tension rods extending from it. These tension rods, visible on the façade, accentuate the tower's verticality. They link with the beam system on each slab, also connected to the core. This system allows the tower's volume to be divided into three large sections to accommodate vertical gardens and offers flexibility in the floor plan for different housing types and future uses of the tower. The envelope of the tower is an extension of the interior walls of the dwellings, creating a façade with diagonal elements that change and alter the solid and void, varying by floor and in different patterns. The floor plates stand out from the façade.

The bar, elevated above the ground, is composed of several concrete cores that reach the ground like stitches. Steel beams emanate from the cores, forming a three-dimensional grid, the building functions as a large truss, with a steel deck slab on beams supporting, on the first floor, the botanical research center, with a technical flooring system that allows the passage of required installations; on top of this is the linear park. The bar has a curtain wall façade system, with perimeter circulation.

The structural and constructive definition of the project becomes the protagonist when understanding it as an element of urban infrastructure, "the infrastructure building," setting it aside from the conventional buildings that surround it and spread throughout the city.

Design: Silvia Juliana Rueda Guerrero
Tutors: Daniela Atencio, Claudio Rossi, Daniel Bonilla