Torres Del Parque
(1968–1970)
Rogelio Salmona
Bogotá, Colombia
Rogelio Salmona
Bogotá, Colombia
Rogelio Salmona was a student when he met Le Corbusier in Bogotá. 1947 was the year before La Violencia, a ten-year civil war that would drive millions from the countryside into cities. Salmona was not yet finished with his architecture studies, but growing unrest prompted him to accept an offer to work as a draftsman for Le Corbusier in Paris.
Among other projects, Salmona worked with Corbusier on the Unité d'habitation (1952), an 18-story housing block in Marseille. Unité was a thoroughly modern solution to mass-produced housing; it incorporated apartments, shops, and communal services within a self-contained block. When Salmona returned in 1958, Bogotá was looking to architects like Corbusier for replicable models for large housing.
By the time Salmona began work on Torres Del Parque (1968), he was looking for a way to translate Corbusier’s notions of integrated public space into a Colombian setting. Salmona was wary of the limits to Unité’s overt functionalism- for Salmona, a housing solution for Bogotá would have to be completely integrated with its context, down to the scale of the brick.
Torres Del Parque is comprised of three towers. Towers are linked by a series of public plazas, which continue down the hillside. Similar to the Unité, the project boasts a remarkable material consistency. Salmona’s mentor had favored brut concrete, but Salmona chose local brick throughout the entirety of the project, creating captivating forms. Aside from the facades of each tower, bricks compose a large amount of the urban furniture on the hillside. Bricks line the stairs, they line the retaining walls terracing the hill, they line the reflecting pool. This afternoon, children around the pool are chasing birds, creating a spectacle for nearby café - sitters.
Imperfect junctions between bricks create patterns that carry the length of the project. The building’s mechanical systems exhaust through shafts that feature the same detail as the rest of the project. Salmona provides nearly no color variation in Torres, but the project has an incredible warmth and human scale to it.
(Above) Unité D’habitation
from the Foundation Le Corbusier
Site Plan of Torres Del Parque
from the Fundación Rogelio Salmona
from the Fundación Rogelio Salmona