 Good evening. Welcome to the lecture series. My name is Enrique Walker. I'm the director of the AD program and will host the session on behalf of Madeline Drowes tonight. It is my pleasure to welcome to the school Camilo Restrepo. Camilo founded and leads the practice Agenda together with Juliana Gallego Martinez, an architectural practice which is based in Medellin, Colombia, since 2010, which is, in fact, a key component of his architectural practice. I met for the first time Camilo about eight years ago, and he was introduced to me as basically the person who could actually allow me to understand the Medellin case. In fact, he has been a decisive figure in the contemporary architectural debate in Latin America, but first and foremost, somebody who has actually read, interrogated, and deciphered the case of Medellin, a kind of extraordinary case of transformation of the city, but also the role that architecture has played within it. By the same token, I would dare say that Camilo has also been a sort of very important force in situating the city and the urban question not only at the core of his work, but also at the core of the architectural debate in Latin America at large, which I must say for some of us had been an elusive question when we seemed to be sort of doomed to exclusively a discussion of architecture in Latin America at the level of the region. More recently, Camilo has addressed other cliches of Latin American architecture, such as the tropics, which has also been the topic that he has addressed in the recent studios he has conducted at the GSD, which I had the pleasure to attend as a juror. So it is, in fact, my pleasure to welcome Camilo to the school and a privilege to have the chance to continue the conversation with him following his lecture. So please help me welcome Camilo Restrepo. Thank you, Enrique, for your kind presentation. I'm very glad to be here joining you today. Thank you to the school, to Amal, for bringing me here and speak and share some thoughts with you. I would like to begin with a very brief description of the territory where we perform architecture, since we believe that architecture is a description of the territory. It allows things to collide, to coincide within the architecture, culture, social conditions, disciplinary questions, climate, et cetera. So we believe that strongly architecture is displaced as a meeting point. It's an optimistic performance. Architecture is optimistic. Architects, we are optimistic because we bring this idea of transformation, of imagining things that previously didn't thought were possible. We believe architecture can have this power of changing, re-describing things as it used to be. It has this ability to re-describe reality. This is the territory where we live in. This is Colombia. This is the Caribbean Ocean, Pacific Ocean. And Medellin, it's somewhere else here. Here is our state. And Medellin is the capital. The state, it's called Antioquia. And it's very interesting to see this map because it brings us the configuration of the geography. Geography is very important for us because it's not also the surface how it's covered the territory, but also creates a very particular case of relating with nature and relating with the resources that are available. Medellin is here in the middle of a plateau. And we have a condition of tropical weather of 1,400 meters above sea level. This is Medellin by night, 25 kilometers long by pretty much 16 kilometers wide. And we have these different conditions of urbanization going from informal settlements to more rigid heritage of the Spanish tradition of the grid, plus very different variations of historical interpretations of grids during the modern era between the 30s and 40s. This is a view from the north looking to the south. So you see the configuration of the city, a very narrow valley. Around here it's 2,300 meters above sea level. Here it's around 1,500 meters above sea level. So we have a very dynamic climate moving between 18 degrees Celsius to 30 degrees during the whole year round. We have no seasons. So in that sense, tropics, it's very boring because we only have a rain or sunny days. And that creates a very interesting case on how architecture performs under these circumstances. This is a view from the south. So you see all this industrialization along the river. And how this gap in the city is defined, but this peripheral line that the river creates is not used for boats. It's simply, let's call it a ditch of 60 meters depth. So we see all these different types of urbanization, the modern tower, residential towers from the 70s, 80s, and contemporary towers colliding with these informal settlements that go all around the valley and all this force of nature that drives, which is the space that it's in between us. A couple of images of the transformation of Medellin of the last 12 years. This is the metro cable going into the northern part of the city before and after of different social housing projects that were performed by the government, before and after also of this re-qualification of the public space and through the system of infrastructure, but also how architecture plays this role of giving social value to the relation between architecture and the people. Another one of before and after, how this tissue of public space begins to create this space between the houses and the monuments, let's say in a rosy way, how the creation of these monuments that bring people that drive attention in like a primary element, but also at the same time, all these informal housing that needs to be performed or needs to be re-engaged, needs to be still affected by these logics of politics. So we have done this small canopy here in the Botanic Garden. It's the canopy for the flower exhibition of the Orchidorama as we call it. All this area became transformed in the last 14 years. All this is informal settlements with more than one million inhabitants. And all this has become like the northern part of, the center of the northern part of the city through all these social infrastructure projects. I will go into it in a couple of minutes, but first I would also like to describe the rural settlements, the rural environment that we have to deal with. So how architecture in this kind of record image that I showed at the beginning, how architecture moves from the R to the U from the rural to the urban constantly and how architecture needs to ask questions and respond to this condition in a very different sense is not the same to intervene the urban realm with architecture tools, with the architecture discipline or intervene the rural area or the rural domain with the architecture discipline and its tools. They need to be recalibrated. They need to be assumed that they perform differently because the effect and the condition there and the context operates completely different. I will go into it through the lecture. So for us, the mountains are not the last frontier. We live in the mountains. It's where we live. It's how we create our environment. It's what we transform through and with architecture. So we look at these different vernacular settlements, these vernacular information that I think it explains very well of the territory, how they engage and transform and settle these platforms in order to make surface flat. To make surface flat sounds a little bit absurd, but in Colombia it has a lot of meaning because everything is steep. So the action of making flat, it's the first action that we need to engage in order to create a realm for architecture to happen. This is the kind of history we inherited as there is a big difference between Colombia and other countries in Latin America. Colombia doesn't have the tradition of Peru or Mexico of having pre-Columbian heritage. Doesn't have the European influence such as Argentina or even Peru in some places or other places like Uruguay. So Colombia falls more into the side of Brazil but without the immigration. So that makes it a very endogamic culture, a culture locked within itself for many different reasons. One is geography as I have shown before, but the other one of course is the conflict for the last 60 years. So for us history it's incomplete. Our historical references locally speaking can only be taken or referenced to vernacular architecture. But we see a lot of potential in these kind of situations. It's a very intelligent architecture. I will develop the idea further. So you see all these kind of very basic motifs taken from Owens, arts and crafts, the grammar of ornament from the late 1900 that arrived with British mining engineers. So people began to adapt these graphics coming from Owens' book into these kind of climatic devices. So how we begin to adapt this foreign history into tropicalizing it, to making it our own. And then this became our heritage also mixed with the Spanish construction tradition of Extremadura and Andalusia. So we live in this kind of the cliche of the tropic. When we mention the tropic, we all believe that the tropic is this. It's a beach with a white sand, a blue sky, perhaps with a cocktail with a little umbrella in it. But the tropic it's more complicated because the tropic it's a condition that it's a belt that goes around many different climates, many different conditions. So the tropic is this, but at the same time is this. It's the Andes Mountains. It's this condition of being on top of a mountain. While here you can have 30 degrees Celsius on a warm day. Here you can have a minus 10 degrees in a late at dawn. So you have all these situations within the same place within hours driving from one place to the other one. So then how we began to ask ourselves, how do we engage into architecture to respond to this condition without being nostalgic, without being referential in the sense of being too much with a moral approach to technique or having to explain our architecture within the social values. Because I think that one of the greatest curses of the last years is that every time, and this also belongs to the cliche of the tropic, is that every time we belong, we mention tropic or Latin America, we immediately tend to believe that architecture needs to be socially engaged made by collaborative processes, made within the community, and that's not necessarily. I mean, in our places, such as Colombia, architecture is always socially engaged. We just don't need to highlight it constantly to remind us of that role. So one of my concerns is, and that's my purpose as how I perform and understand the discipline, is that architecture needs to respond within the frame of architecture itself. And we cannot judge them out of it because then we will be talking about sociology, politics, economy, or perhaps something else that doesn't bring anything back to the discipline. So I think that we need to protect our discipline, especially in these days of extreme porosity where architecture discussions are not intended as to be a station where everything arrives into architecture and becomes architecture, but the other way. Everything that we tend to discuss in the last years, I think it's a kind of a hijacked discipline, is that we tend to discuss architecture within the realm of sociology, ecology, material culture, but always running away from the discussion of architecture itself. So going into the architecture, how do we understand it? I think we architects are the only discipline that create projects for ourselves and we are only successful once we place the problems and we are successful getting out of the problems we ourselves created, engaging these problems into a reality, let's call it a context, but also call it the compromise with our time and our region or our context. So we see the architecture as this crossing part between discipline that constructs problem and a practice that solves problem. So this is our course. We have to respond for very precise needs of clients, local conditions, et cetera, but at the same time, we have to move our limit of the discipline a bit forward to make ourselves necessary. We have to make ourselves necessary for the sake of architecture on one hand, but also for the societies we work in. So the question is how do we make ourselves necessary? So I go to a very particular drawing from Loge where all the canons of the classic order are lying below and we see this image as a very promising image, a very complex image at the same time because somehow what the goddess is pointing out is not only the archetype or the type and all the discussion and the texts that have been written about this engraving before, but also what's necessary to make architecture out of nature or what we consider nature and what's the role of this limit and how this architecture, this idea of making architecture which is tracing the limit of making inside and outside as a primary element, how do we engage and understand this when the climate and the condition and the territory allows us not to have walls? How does our architecture breathe? How does our architecture, it's able to engage into these context discussions of place, site, even if it's precise, perhaps in these regions, how this work, but at the same time, be able to judge, participate and belong to this tradition which is the Mediterranean history of architecture which I consider it's the history of architecture. So looking into these engravings, the creation of the Corinthian order, it's a very beautiful story that Moneo also mentions in his text about arbitrariness, but I think for us has been very useful and very beautiful to understand what architecture is about. The legend or the story tells that a princess or a noble girl died and a friend wanted to pay homage to her and brought a basket weaved by hand, made out of fibers, put a clay lid in top of it and then place it beside an acantus plant. Then the acantus grew up in a very arbitrary way of course and created, and it was of such beauty and proportions that then the Corinthian order was then established. For us it's a beautiful condition because it's this relation between what's made by hand, what's made by heat, architecture, it's a mineral way of organizing matter and that can be done and explained by the clay, but also at the same time, it's what it's between all of us which is not graspable, it's not describable, but makes us able to relate differently, to understand what is our position not only in the world, but among ourselves related with what we call nature. So then these constructions begin to evolve in a way unprecedented that we cannot explain and then it becomes uncertain in the sense that that order that architecture plays it's a temporary order and we like and understand and will all the time for these kind of temporary orders. Architecture is a temporary order of space. So for the first project I'm gonna show you it's an exhibition we did last year in Liga. Liga it's a great architecture gallery in Mexico City. So the first thing we engage with it was called Tropical Canonical. Also how we can create an order out of the tropic to explain a temporary condition made of the tropic. How could we take the tropic to Mexico City and be understood as such? So the first thing that we were looking at were these images taken by Camilo Chavarria. Camilo Chavarria it's an artist from Medellin and he goes around taking pictures and then he assembles new pictures out of it. So none of these landscapes are real. For instance, this is now a mountain here, it's Mount Fiji. So he creates this atmosphere and create this new image that doesn't exist but explains very well the tropic. Explains very well this condition of the horizon that I will call the modern architecture. Modern architecture is more near the idea of the desert because the horizon is extremely important. This relation with depth, with depth with a line but on the other hand the tropic has a very different kind of space. It's a space that it's made by layers. It's made like the jungle, it's a layered space. That within the same plane you have very different sizes of things that tell you very different things. In other words, it's a narrative made of layers. So this image also by Camilo can have this kind of a very big detail of a leaf but at the same time the depth of the accumulation of many leaves and many details that come together. Or this drawing by Avel Rodriguez he's an indigenous artist from Colombia that it's beautiful in the sense that explains the forest not because of the trees but because of the leaves of the trees. So that gives us a very different relation with scale, a very different relation of depth with the space and the detail becomes the most important part on how to construct the whole. How this homogenous, we can construct the whole from two perspectives. On one hand we construct the whole departing from the homogeneity of the elements or we can construct the whole of the heterogeneity of the parts. And I think in the topic in this idea these worlds collide in a very interesting way giving us a very different sense of how we move in space. What's the threshold? What's the limit? What's the line? What's the border? And how ambiguous the elements become? So we were looking officially on vise with the images of the flowers and the gardens of how all this overlaying of different scales and images were given us a very different sense of space, a very different sense of scale. We were looking at Thomas Struth, also images of the forest, of the rainforest pretty much into the same line of Camillo Chawarria. And then we wanted to put together two places that for us have a lot of meaning. One is the garden of our office which is in this picture. And the other one is the garden of our house. So how could we brought a place that didn't exist in Mexico for the same experience or at least to try to recall that experience and make it happening very far in a very different way but mediated by the power of architecture. So we were looking first at the dioramas. Dioramas were this, it was a kind of a pre-photographic experience of space where they printed into silk images of travels of the travelers of the 19th century while it was being lit behind with candles and they were moving and moving these screens to make a kind of animated landscape. So we thought that this kind of narrative of the late 18th and 19th century was very important for us in the sense that describe our territory from a very, let's say a humboldt way of looking into nature that for us not having a heritage of built heritage, we could use it as a tool to describe our own territory and with it the atmosphere that we wanted to create. Then we thought also that we could have a kind of a hidden layer of history of what the city is. And Medellin was a textile city, a textile productive city for many years. This is one of the textile companies in the early 20th century. So that was another reason why wouldn't we use a textile that speaks for our city, that speaks for our history and then begin to use history and understand history in a very open way. Let's slow down for a while and think that there is a very big difference and beauty about it in the history of architecture which is that history of architecture, it's an open book that we, no matter where we come from, we can write, participate, read and understand and then we feel it belongs to us. While the history of nations only has meaning for a person that it's originated or comes from that place. That creates a very different idea of narrative and a relation with history because what I'm saying somehow what I'm suggesting is that history of architecture can be modified and no matter what happens we will feel it belongs to us. It gives us reasons to do the things we do. It allows us to use the material of somebody else no matter where it comes from and then we can use it to our own benefit and then we are able to rewrite a narrative that perhaps enters the realm of reality and then we could claim as many authors do that reality or truth is what we made out of it. So we wanted to use also the reference of Mies van der Rohe of Café Samtoun Seide in Berlin like how these elements were able to create a logic of architecture. All these textile soft borders were defining a very different relation with space. Very mysteriously, very awkward in the logic of modern architecture but pretty much into Mies's logic of ambiguity and undefined borders. And then we had this affection for Sonsvik pavilion from Aldo van Eyck that we thought what happens if we put all these things together into this small space of 16 square meters in Mexico City and we use the floor plan of van Eyck. So we were wondering if we could invert everything as the topic usually does. If the northern culture has taught us that things are rigid, that the light should come from above, that transparency is made by glass, why not believe that the light won't come from above? It will go from below, more into an Arabic tradition. What is rigid in Sonsvik in our case will be flexible, it will move, it will be dynamic instead of static and instead of discovering the layers of opaque walls, why not create a space that is layered as the forest? So we inserted the whole floor plan into the corner of Liga, very, very small. This is 14 square meters, this is the gallery. So we created this overlay of silk textile printed in color with different scales of tropical nature. So as long as you were moving into the direction of discovering or unveiling this line, you will see how the scale will change of the patterns that were printed on the textile. So as you see it begins to grow from flowers, to bushes, to plants and then to trees and then to create the whole forest. So this is what came out of it and I like to start this lecture with it because it somehow explains what we think about architecture, about this very fragile border that needs to be dilated, that needs to be expanded for things to happen to respond to a very uncertain social condition that today might be needed for a concert but tomorrow for a riot, a political riot or the other day for a car exhibition or to be articulated as a public space but then the other day as an enclosed garden. So we were thinking that this flexibility, this permeability will allow us to create this space that it's expanded, expanded the threshold. So this is pretty much the effect of the installation in the gallery. It was very high resolution print. So when you were getting close you could see and define and recognize the patterns of the plants but then at the same time it was extremely ambiguous because it looked also at the same time as just silhouettes and this is pretty much how it looked outside. So here a small video just to show you a little bit how it moved, how it performed in the space. These veils of undefined transparency that you could see through but not completely that they were enclosing a space that was made to go through so it was not a place to stay. So all these kind of ambiguous conditions that are not black or white but at the same time are black and white and gray is what defines this idea of the tropical space that we are pretty much into trying to define, trying to work with but at the same time how this tropical space, we found this kind of paradox that the more specific the elements of architecture are the most ambiguous the space become. So it's this paradox. Once you realize a column is a column and you can read it as a column. A window is a window and it plays no tricks. It's just a window and the wall is just a limit between inside and outside that can get porous and can create this ambiguous condition of letting the air through which is not completely inside, which is not completely outside. Then when you realize that these elements play the role it should play as the tradition of architecture has taught us in a very specific perhaps perhaps we could claim also conservative way then it operates in very interesting ways in the tropic because it allows people to do whatever they want. It allows things to happen and that's a very important condition. How we allow things to happen not to control the whole space but how this space becomes negotiable. How this becomes openly enough for things that we didn't believe could happen or that we didn't expect. I will move a little bit further here but you see how something that was rigid became dynamic, right? And something that was static now it's movable how something that was opaque became transparent. The next project it's pretty much into the same logic. It's the Chicago architecture biennial 2017 make new history. What's the topic of the biennial? So in the same way of trying to understand or make history hours we were thinking why not take a look at the curtain wall by Mies. So we were thinking that this ambiguous idea of the words that curtain wall can mean two things at the same time. One a misunderstanding of course and one the understanding of it could made a lot of sense. So we thought why not try to create the effect, the opposite effect of a curtain wall in the Northern Hemisphere which is that instead of letting the air out we will let the air in. Everything that happens outside will bring it in. So instead of creating this limit we will make it as porous as possible to connect with the outside. So misunderstanding the curtain wall from Mies we thought okay Mies also played with curtains not only made of glass and iron as the constructive system but also as his curtains in Barcelona pavilion and some inside as I showed before and then we bumped into this wonderful image from the Tuggenhardt house. So we thought why not make this effect happen for real? For real and for false in the sense that why don't we try to create a space as if all the nature has become the imprint of the materials but they are as artificial as possible. So we thought okay let's give a different interpretation to all of the patterns that Mies created in his project in most of his projects. So let's give them a tropical interpretation a graphical composition of device inverting the condition from moving from a mineral order to a natural order. So the wall of Onix at the Barcelona pavilion we made it become an orchid. The stone of the outside of the Barcelona pavilion we made it become lichen, lichen. The other stone we made it become moss. And the wood, the mahogany wood we made it become the trunk of a tropical tree that it's called Ceiba. Okay and the other one of the Barcelona pavilion and that it's also present in Lakeshore Drive we made it become the depth of the forest. So we created all these different patterns of leaves, forests, lichens, flowers, et cetera into a new order to create and define a space. So we were getting back again to the loge engraving thinking about what's inside and what's outside and how we could define and recreate this idea 200 years after the loge idea of architecture and the archetype and the illustration ideals of architecture. So we invited Camilo Chavarria, the photographer, to take some pictures of the coffee growing region in Medellin which is one hour, two hours from Medellin 100 kilometers where we made a building for processing coffee that I'm showing. So we thought why don't we use the logic of Mies of the curtain wall with the logic of our project for processing coffee that has also a curtain wall but instead of being transparent, it's opaque and it's full of holes to let the air go through which is completely the opposite. And at the same time, let's invite Camilo to create a narrative of the site, of that context and put all these things together. So we invite Camilo Chavarria to take these photos and another Camilo, Camilo Echeverri to take photos of our project. So it was a Camilo's collaboration and this is the images that Camilo found. This is one of these small hots that are used for people to wait coffee before they sell it to a provider. And we thought, okay, let's bring the relations and they will come together once they are there. So this is one of the images. Then also the image of the Farnsworth house under construction, these elements, these primary elements, also in relationship with these two other images that I showed before. Then these vernacular architecture to dry coffee. This is our project. This is the system for floating facade or curtain wall but then used completely for the opposite purpose just to have a cover and let the air go through. Then also the lecture drive under construction. One of the only heritage we have there which is these coffee infrastructural buildings to dry and process coffee from the 19th century which operate in a very precise ways. As I mentioned before, a slab is a slab and you can read it as such. The columns are columns and you can read it as such. So it's no trick in it. It's very direct, very pragmatic, very objective, very defined in its elements. An image also of the threshold between inside and outside of the Farnsworth house. The threshold, which is very important for us this image of the coffee growing building from the 19th century, this limit that defines an inside and an intermediary space that is not completely in or out that intermediates between inside and outside, a temporary space. Then another image of the description of the site by Camillo. We put together some historical images of sugarcane processing mills of the 1918 century. This one it's in the Caribbean. But also again, the rationality of the elements, the objectivity of each one of them. And then also how we used all this logic of cutting through the wood to let the air go through that we will reinterpret it in our project. And then our project on this site described undepicted by Camillo. So then how this curtain wall began to allow the air to come through. And then the project on the site, making reference not only unconnected, not only with the vernacular architecture, but also with this logic of the traditional or the history and the heritage of modern architecture. How this idea of nature in Latin America since the 18th and 1900 was to bring nature into the inside. Nature happens inside, not outside. So it inverts the logic of how we define space. This engraving also from the 19th century. And then the region where the project is. And of course these descriptions by Humboldt of the floors over a sea level that were also depicted by the nearby mountains taken also by Camillo. So we put all these things together in a small niche in a very long hallway, more or less 60 meters long by four meters wide in the Chicago architecture biennial in the Chicago cultural center. So we were using all these references of wood cutting the elements, the ceiling, how the light came from below in a very, in Islamic tradition, more than Northern tradition, and how our project begins to create this logic of this box that gets perforated by just letting the air go through. So this was the hallway that we got. And this is the installation. So we created all these niche, creating these walls of bringing this atmosphere of humidity, of warmth, of climate, of this tension between these spaces that you had to wander around to discover and see what was inside. So inside were these images that I'm showing you and some others as well. So we were putting into contradiction many historical images from vernacular architecture that has no pedigree that nobody knows who did it, but at the same time contrasting with this logic, this rationale brought by Mies, especially being in Chicago and especially having the chance of bringing this ambiguity to tropical architecture through the modern masters. Another detail. Okay, so entering into the project of the community coffee mill, it's a box, as simple as that, of 66 meters long by 38 meters wide. It's to process coffee. That means that once the cherry gets taken out of the tree, the cherry is the red thing. Inside it's a knot. The knot is the one that goes to roasting and it's the one we drink, let's say. So the process here, it's between grabbing the cherry and drying it and then taking the knot to a roasting company. So it's all this in between process. So the box has all these machines to dry, to wash, to ferment the coffee. All this happens here in a linear process that I'm not gonna go into the detail of it. And then we talk with the client. Why not bring a little bit of social responsibility also here to allow the kids and the farmers, because this is for a cooperative to have a small communitary center. So it's a mixed program of processing coffee and at the same time educational facility which is more or less 80 square meters. So the process is very simple. The coffee arrives in a truck here, gets down, gets washed. Then they take the peel off and goes into a compost pile. Then the knot gets into water for 12 hours. Then it gets washed again and then it gets dried in an oven. That's pretty much what the program is about. So this is the main hole of the warehouse and this is where all the compost goes in beside it. So the section was very simple. This is pretty much 14 meters with a roof supported by this beam. This is around three meters 50. And we created a device for all the air to let in because since the oven, the process of drying the machine implies oven, so therefore implies heat and therefore it goes with a steam. 65% of the component of the bin, of the cherry, it's water. So inside this is a steam machine. So we needed to get rid of the steam very quick. So we opened here the facade below for the cold air to go up and we opened it in the top for the steam to go out. So we also wanted to take advantage of that to create a spatial effect that will be more dramatic and will also create an atmosphere inside of it. So this is the location of the building. This is for 1200 families located, as I mentioned, 100 kilometers southeast from Medellin. A very simple structure, a block with three layers of perforations. This is made of ultra of concrete with a color and fiberglass, so they are lighter. This is the process of assembling, putting them into this curtain wall, hanging them one by one. We chose this material in prefab because of the difficulty of bringing supplies to this area. So it was easier to produce all this and bring it there. We are committed with the materiality of our projects for two reasons. One, we are committed and understand that labor is completely limited, so we don't want or we don't need to try to create something out of the blue that nobody can build, but also at the same time, we tend to move between this kind of idea of stereotomy and tectonic idea of architecture because I guess these two conditions of space relate very differently according to the climate or the condition where it is settled. This is the project outside. This is the compost. So we engraved some of the panels with these kind of motifs coming from this reinterpretation of history made by the people in this area thanks to the books brought by the mining engineers in the 19th century, coming from the grammar of ornament by Owen. So we created these panels, the one on top with this kind of diamond shape for the art to go out. And these ones engraved with all these graphic representation, this ornament of what it's already in these towns around the project. A very simple structure, very rational I will say, and with these kind of effects to the inside. Joints and construction detailing was very simple. It's basically a grid of steel structure covered with concrete panels. As simple as it could be. Almost a no detail architecture in the sense that we didn't have to solve all the problems of labor and construction system out of just a few drawings. This has become somehow a center for the community. So kids go there to learn and see other information and get other information, connect to internet, wifi. And this is the effect I was telling you about the steam inside, which is, I think it's very beautiful for a facility, for just a factory. Then I'm gonna be very brief with the Orchidorama. The Orchidorama, it's a competition we won in 2005 in association with my father, Jota Paul Restrepo, and my friends from Plum Bay Architects. It's a canopy for the Botanic Garden. It's mainly a structure made of steel built on site. There is no prefab here. Everything was built on site. This is pine wood. And the idea was to create and to expand this threshold again. How we were able to bring inside and outside without you even notice it by just creating a canopy. How we will manage and calibrate the border of the building. How we will set roofs against walls, let's say, making an echo of Lina Oguardi's text of Stones Against Diamonds. We were thinking more about roofs against walls in the sense that in the tropic, it's more important the roof than the wall because it allows you to provide shade, to provide a cover space, a multi-purpose space that it's able to adapt to many conditions by a very simple floor plan. So this changes during the day with rain, without the rain, with a festival of music or a capoeira class or very different situations. So it operates in a very interesting way which is like a semi-covered public space available for people 24 hours a day. There is also a small video here that explains how it's used. It changes with the days and how people engage there. The idea was to have 10 structures that we call flower tree, which is mainly seven hexagons where the one in the middle it's always a void that has a special garden down below. And then each one of them had a different garden with orchids or tropical flowers. For the competition, we thought it was gonna be 14 of these structures, but due to budget, it was shortened into 10. But somehow, since we thought about it in a way of a system that was solved only by defining one of these elements, no matter the short touch in budget, the building stayed the same. But now it has become very interesting in the logic of the city of the everyday life. People go there to practice music, to just spend an afternoon there. And it has become a very successful public space that expands again this ambiguous territory between inside and outside. The wood, it's pine wood from a sustainable crop near the, that it's brought near Medellin. And it's polycarbonate for the ones that are transparent and a metallic tile for the ones that doesn't let the air go through. So it creates also this condition as if we were into the forest, into this space made of layering. But that here was going to be mixed with this idea of the horizon, this ambiguity between being very tropical, but at the same time allowing you to see through the space, which is something that it's more from the Northern tradition of architecture. Then just to finish, this is a school we just finished last year. It's also in association with my father, Jota Paul Restrepo. And it's located 300 kilometers south from Medellin near a city that it's called Cali. This is a place called Jumbo. This is a sugarcane plantations and this is an informal settlement. So we thought that the piece that we were doing there from a very symbolic approach, it had to create order there. It had to be monumental. It had to create a certain relation that wasn't previously there in order to create a different social logic, a very different logic with the territory. So the project, it's mainly a box again, a square, a cube, that tries to keep only one material in a very monolithic condition. Also making echo of this povera, let's say condition of just having to cast one material, having to deal only with one condition, but at the same time have the strength of the tectonic as if it was arising from the geology that was present there. This is the side, a very complicated side because it has 16 contours from here to here. That means 16 meters from this point to this point, sorry. And then also on to this side, it was the previous school. So they had to work almost on top of the school without stopping classes. And then from here to here, it also goes down like eight meters. All these houses here are invading the site illegally. So they had to take care of all the neighbors. So we thought that the best option was really to create a very basic shape, making echo but inverting the typology of the patio in the typical typology of the patio. The corridors are inside, allowing the privacy to happen for the exterior part of the building. But we thought that we needed to make it the other way around due to the climate that it's around 34 degrees Celsius year round. So we thought, so let's place the patio in the middle in a very rigid grid that we will take the ramp to the corner of the mountain, the entrance to the other, let's say the bay of the terrain and allowing people just to circulate in the perimeter, always protecting the core of the building as a way of making air flow and allowing children to play inside without falling off the building because that was pretty much restricted. So on the first floor, we have the cafeteria and the restaurant of the building. This is a 1700 square meters building. The library, the kindergarten and the infant stimulation room. And on the second floor, it's just rooms in a cross diagram shape of a functional distribution and some double heights that were taking place, especially in the hall of the entry of the school and on the library. But then again, how the type was changed to bring the circulation to the perimeter. You can see it here, it's this was the most important topic for the interior of the building, which in the end is not an interior, it's again the exterior. Then the roof with a slope to one side to get the most of the light as possible without getting the heat. Also these elements began to play a very important role to cut the noise up there. So they had an angle that was calculated to cut the waves, the sonic waves of noise here and also this element to cut the afternoon sun. In the tropic, the sun is not something you wish to have, it's something that gives you problems. So somehow you are protecting all the time from the sun. So this is the double height of the library and a very beautiful space which is the ramps and the double height of how you circulate. So for us circulation was very important, how you move in the building and around the building, how you get different images of the landscape through the building, how we understood the building as a device to understand the topography, as a device to see the landscape, as a device to understand space, the space that it's below you, but also at the same time, how you can create this intimate space, sorry, that was at the same time very porous to the outside view. You will see it in the images. So we made this monolithic idea of models casted in concrete, a very rigid, very rational, very monumental, orthogonal, very architectonic stamina presence into the site. Just with a cut to allow the sun to cut, to be cut by this perimeter, but at the same time to have and spend most of the time around the school, not inside of the rooms. In that sense, people will learn through the holes, will be likely to spend more time in the perimeter than inside the classes. Just with a few details to cut and edit and do a kind of addition of the landscape through the building that you will see in the images. So this is the presence of the building in top of the mountain, pretty much like a temple, a monument in top of the neighborhood. This is the materiality, reddish, yellowish concrete using the sand from the site, which is this color, very rough in its definition. Also at the same time, making echo of these thresholds that I showed before in the project from the 19th century, which is, I think, a very good description of how the tropic is defined on its spatial condition. How you begin to see this huge balcony over the valley, how a typology that it's always used for one or two people to get together, which is the balcony, then becomes the whole balcony. Then a space, which is to move around, becomes a space to be in. So it begins to cut all these perspectives from the outside to mark stuff or things that happen outside while it creates a very precise order on the site. But at the same time, a very ambiguous relation within inside and outside. This huge balcony for the community and for the people. How the restaurant operates between these two spaces. This is looking into the courtyard. This is looking out into the view. Then the double height of very precise spatial condition. One vertical, one horizontal space condition with the proper light to see without needing to turn on the lights. And then these small devices to cut the landscape that it's outside. All these elements to protect from falling. This is, you will see it in another image. It's eight or 10 meters above the ground in this place. So all these small elements that begin to play a kind of ornament, dealing with elements from the history of architecture, like making a little bit of a homage here to Marcel Broya. But the ramp again, coming up, coming down of these very well-lit elements and the light going through around. And how could you see through this layer, the space, which is pretty much this. How you could see many layers of space within the same device. The courtyard again, with the elements to cut the noise and the sun at a certain time of the day. And this glimpse of this little, I miss the word, like paying attention to these things that were near in the landscape. How it got cut. You see the materiality, it's very rough. It's extremely rough because labor doesn't give you more than that. So we were thinking about if it's gonna be rough, let's make it very, very rough. So making use of the resource of the handmade as a quality and not as a problem. We cannot pretend to build as if we were Swiss. So you see this is the difference of level here. And yeah, I mean about the Swiss thing because when you go to Switzerland, you feel so bad. You see these concretes and they are all smooth, precise. They really feel like concrete, no? This sometimes feels like stone, sometimes feels like wood, sometimes the borders don't even match. But then you see that it's also a possibility of re-describing the materiality in those terms of how things have a strength of being its own by the roughness of it, of the naturality. And this is pretty much the school from the outside with this huge balcony going around. So we were thinking pretty much of how to make this type of space, making it the whole definition of it, a courtyard and the balcony for everybody to enjoy. I guess that's pretty much, thank you very much. Thank you very much. Is it working? Yeah, it is. Thank you very much for your lecture Camilo. It's always a pleasure to hear and also to have the chance to continue the conversation. I'd like to go to basically address some of the various practices that you engage. Your lecture was more focused on practice, but I'd like to also go back to some of the other practices that you've engaged since the beginning, whether it's basically engaging architecture as a thinker, writer as a teacher, and in fact as a designer. It's absolutely true that the first time I heard about you was when probably 2011, 12, I had learned about the case of Medellin and I asked a few people to learn more about it and everyone basically pointed to you, saying, well, Camilo, step with the person you have to talk to basically. He was the one who sort of had been discussing the topic, examining it, describing it, and in fact you lectured extensively on it and that's in fact how we met. So I would say that basically you were sort of on the younger side of the Medellin experiment and you became in fact the protagonist by virtue of examining it. So it was very refreshing to me precisely and we've shared this because basically for many of us the sort of discussion in Latin America was traditionally reduced to the question of the region. In fact, as you discussed Switzerland. It's not through the question of the city and it was refreshing to see that basically Medellin was taking hold of the conversation at the level of the city. So you basically very much define a sort of agenda work by discussing Medellin. So I'd like to basically ask you at this stage when you're basically more focused on practice and practice as its own condition that usually takes you to the questions that are driven by the very projects that you are asked to address. I would like to ask in which way are you basically now engaging questions that were opened by you about the city as you engage basically design and more openly the question of practice? It's not an easy question but I guess we have we have moved for the last years in a very unexpected direction. I would say I didn't expect to move toward the topics that I'm interested right now but I realized that we were able to make the city new somehow but we don't know anything about its past. And somehow while a lot of territories has been have been activated due to the peace process we have discovered a lot of regions, urban rural regions, even the wilderness that have a lot of heritage now it's endangered. Somehow what has happened is that from one day to the other one pretty much like that avail fell which was the conflict in the sense I mean I'm not saying the conflict disappeared but somehow a lot of territories that were completely abandoned were available to be visited. And then when you begin to go there you see a lot of protected heritage due to violence paradoxically which is this rural frontier that opened and then suddenly we were facing a country that we don't know, a country that we don't understand, a country that we don't know what's going on. So I thought that why not understand the history of architecture, not only performing in the cities but also outside of them can create a different narrative on who we are. I mean, sounds a very stupid purpose but because it sounds, I mean asking yourself who you are today is not the same of asking who you are 100 years ago but then you see all these heritage you see how we tear down all the cities pretty much our historical centers in all the country beside the Cartagena city center a little bit in Bogota a little bit of Popajan city to the south all our cities have been completely demolished. So then I'm saying it's unexpected because for a period of time you want to play the Vanguard perspective, right? But then you realize that the Vanguard or trying to play this Vanguard requires an understatement which is that if you want to play the Vanguard you have to know what's before. So it has taken us to a path that it's very weird, I will say, I had very bad history teachers, very bad theory teachers too. So somehow I'm making, I'm trying to do the homework I didn't do at school which is go back to the seminal texts of architecture trying to understand what's the relation with the situation we face now in a very pragmatic way what happens with the city, what happens with rurality and then mysteriously all the authors that were completely boring at the time we were studying, they all make sense. So it's a very weird situation. We understand the city and rurality in these codependence they need each other and we need to come with a certain amount of ideas on how to intervene these places because not only from a responsible point of view of social responsibility but also what will be the role of architecture there? Would it be to urbanize what previously didn't have any urban condition? I'm not so sure. Would it be to keep it as it is? I'm not so sure. So I think it's the right moment to ask how we make ourselves necessary. That's pretty much what we are into. Right. Would you also say that your push towards the city was both basically an opportunity because there were things happening in Medellin that made basically discussion on the city but also on the city through the architectures, through basically it's a city that changed through a number of very precise buildings. So the Rossi reading is very important there. But would you say that what was on component or also as we've discussed you're moving away from the traditional reading of South American architecture as regional? In fact, it was a sort of a pitfall that for many, many years South American architects could not discuss anything but the region. So to what extent would you say you were aiming at one or the other? Yes, I think that Latin America has had two very bad, well, not two very bad, but two situations that have not well fitted into the condition of architecture itself. One, it's when Arabena gets to be the curator of the biennial is fantastic. I mean, Latin America, they're playing but then a veil fell immediately over the perception of Latin America which is that all architecture needs to be socially engaged. And I think that has taken us to a very weird path which is that the cliche of Latin America now it's expected to be either regional in the critical regionalism tradition of Mr. Frampton from the 60s and 70s, from the 70s or this socially engaged architecture. So somehow we have made ourselves out of the disciplinary discussion that needs to be engaged within the realm of history, theory and the autonomy of architecture for some instance and then we fall off this kind of train. The train is going into a direction where we felt off the train for a long time ago. So how to create a narrative of your work, of your responsible commitment with your context of course, but at the same time be able to play the game of the disciplinary thoughts that need to be discussed at the same time because in the end, while when we jump off the train and we believe that architecture is about social responsibility only which is in fact a big deal of it, then sociologist, anthropologist or whoever speaks on the name of architecture within that frame can do the work better than us. If you need to engage with a bunch of sociologists to do a project, then the sociologist will do the project better than you do because you are not able to put what's important for the discipline in the line and make yourself believable. Then you begin to talk as a sociologist, as an ecologist and you cannot do that. You are not trained for that. Precisely along the lines of this question that you in fact introduced in a slide before about working between the, let's say the discipline and the practice and trying to basically work specifically within the field of architecture. How would you say the question of the tropics entered the equation in your work? I mean, I remember that we discussed it in your studios at the GSD. It's also linked to some of the programs that you were facing. In fact, orchids or coffee immediately push you there. So, and in fact, it's often the case that basically an architect as soon as he, she engages practice, practice starts basically introducing forcibly the topics and randomly, basically. That's in fact the case. So, in which way would you say that the question of the tropics, which is both its potential, as you said, and the pitfalls of the cliche, has allowed you to basically take further some of the issues that you were engaging before through the city? I think that when you spend too much time, I mean, and we've done it, trying to create a narrative, a purpose. Let's call it a purpose. What's the purpose of our architecture? And then you see that if you speak about social conditions, social conditions change all the time. And then it's very hard to build on top of that. Then when you try to work on technology, it's impossible. We have no technology as advanced technology. Then, I mean, you begin to check a lot of boxes. And then in the end, you are left with theory, history, and what you see all day, which is trees, and flowers, and more trees, and more flowers, and more nature, and more pretty boring, the same climate, in the sense that it's rain or sun, that's it. So then you ask the question, I mean, it took me many years, but then how you can connect this and make it belong to a history of architecture? And then we began to use texts such as Ungas of the Archipelago in the city, the city within the city, to see what happens if we take these ideas into a tropical city, what will happen? Or what will happen if we are able to describe the tropic within the representation collage system of Ms. Vandero, what will happen? And then we began to discover through the work of some students that are here, former GSD students, that it was possible to create another narrative out of these elements of architecture that in the end, as I mentioned before, are as open as you want them to be. How we can use the history as an open text to create a narrative that begins to make sense as much as you are willing to push for it? It's sometimes, of course, you force it too much and it doesn't work, but then you are able to redirect and focus on something else to keep on building on top of it. For example, the work of Rossi, while I was a student, I felt completely out of it. I mean, it was complicated, it's too hermetic, it's too personal sometimes. It's a bad writer. Yeah, it's a very bad writer. It's very good for turning on the light on what architecture can be because it's like a promise. It's not a real thing, but then with the years you realize that what he's actually describing and the role he's placing the practice in makes a lot of sense, especially for contexts such as ours, where things have no meaning. So then it begins to make sense or the text ofungas. So then you begin to try to adapt to this and create a melange of these things and try to grow from that. I have to accept that it's an ongoing process. I must say I really enjoy the provocation of the tropics because I think it's a high-risk game because you're really on the edge of returning to the question of the region. So it's really the sort of space where you can actually exploit maximum potential or fall miserably on whatever you're escaping from. So I think it's a phenomenally interesting topic. I feel that I should open the questions and not monopolize the debate. So please, who has the first question? Unless you want to respond to my... No, no, I can't keep the last word. No, don't worry. I would like to add that if it goes wrong that it has a very big amount of going wrong, it will be seen as the worst moral nostalgia. Right, right, right. Which will drown the boat. I think it would be interesting to see whether it intersects again the questions of the city. There's a microphone behind you. Thank you. Hi, thank you for the great lecture for coming. I want to ask a question about the references that you mentioned throughout the lecture. You talked a lot about history of architecture and in a way I like the way it was dialoguing or let's say also in conflict with some other ingredients that you show up today like nature, like tropics, as Erika mentioned before, or the vernacular. But I was curious about why those specific references rather than others you mentioned, Marcel Breuer, Lena Bobardi, I think you showed almost 10 images of me as, so why those specific references and how they become part of your process also. Thank you. I think when you have the will to connect things that seem to be disconnected, you have to go for the big ones already. I mean, it wouldn't make sense if I would go for X architect, no? Because the availability of information will be more at hand. And also at the same time, Mies has become a very interesting architect for me in its specificity of the elements, but in its ambiguity of space. Visiting some of the projects, you realize and you question yourself how such very precise elements create such ambiguous space that you cannot describe formally in the sense that you read the floor plan and you see the section and it doesn't match. It doesn't correspond in the way, for example, a section by Aldo Rossi will correspond with the floor plan. They are basically the same. In Mies, it's not the same. And once you visit the place, it's completely something else. So I was wondering why not go for these kind of experiments? I mean, I would say our work in that sense is quite experimental on trying to bring something out of the blue sometimes. But at the same time, since you don't have any reference of historical heritage, it's very hard to create a narrative when you don't have history. If you go a couple of weeks ago, yeah, a couple of weeks ago, I was in Madrid and in Switzerland. And the whole city's a museum for good and bad. Also in Switzerland, the whole country's a museum for good and bad. You see this building and you have a reference why it happened. It has a lineage. This guy made it because he worked with this and this and this and there is a chain of information that goes from one generation to the other one. We, I'm sorry to say what I'm about to say, but we are just a bunch of bastards. We have no masters, unfortunately. So each one of us has to invent a wheel somehow in a profession that has hundreds of wheels. So we spend too much time trying to learn from somebody that it's around, which is not around. I mean, if you go to Spain for sure you work for or at a certain moment work for Juan and Iñaki and then for Alejandro de la Sota and then you can go back 200, 300 years. If you go to Columbia, you work for, I don't know. You never work for somebody and that's a problem. That's a problem from the discipline, for the cultural responsibility of the discipline and for the environment. So going back to the question I'm going too far but going back there, I thought, okay, we don't have any masters. Let's use the masters that history tells us that are the masters and trying to learn from them even from books. There should be a microphone behind you. I think that my fear is kind of post-rationalizing Colombian architecture to be something that it's not because Colombian architecture is a celebration of the vernacular and what I kind of reference to is like what's happening in East Africa. In East Africa, in Colombia, you can study architecture. In East Africa, architecture programs are not set up. Architecture isn't something that one can go to school to study and it's kind of like what needs to happen is kind of like not, I don't know, I don't understand the process of like applying Mies van der Rohe to the Colombian vernacular when it should be celebrated for celebrating the tropics. We're celebrating everything that is uniquely Colombian. Why are we bringing in another set of ideas? Well, I think that we have to accept something that it's politically incorrect, but it's a reality. I think there are first level countries in architecture and second level countries in architecture. We cannot claim that, I mean, there are, the history of architecture has been written by Europeans and the history of architecture is European. We have to accept it and either we understand it and try to belong to it or we are outside of it. I don't think as the world is organized, as narratives are organized, as the landscape of powers are organized, I don't think for a long time a Latin American architect will write a seminal book of architecture. Either will participate to the discussion of architecture itself. If you go through history, you cannot call 10 names of Latin American architects that participated in this logic. Modernism is quite an exception, of course, because everybody wanted to be modern for many reasons, but beside some of the Brazilians, everything's out of the picture. And we have, I mean, if we accept that, that it's unfair to be Colombian or Chilean or, I don't know, or African in the discussion of architecture, then we can make a point. Otherwise, we will always be left aside. So I think it's more an acceptance of a reality and willing to fight it from within than attacking it from outside. So it's a matter of kind of perceiving the world of architecture through the lens that's already prescribed to us. And then perhaps once we kind of understand it at a different level, we may hopefully be able to be a part of the conversation that starts to revolutionize the world of architecture. I mean, for example, just take a look at this. Most of the literature that has been written about the pre-Columbian ruins of Mexico and Peru are written into a European code. And that's why it's important. We have to accept we live in a European society. Somehow, either we'd like it or not. For the last 400, that's the order of the world. The European values, and I have to say, I love them. That's what makes our culture our culture and your culture, and that's why we are sitting here. Because there is a mega culture that is the European culture. And that's what it's about right now. And everything is getting mixed right now. I mean, for many years, Europe was the rule. Now things are changing, of course, but if we don't know their books, we cannot write ours. Great, thank you. Yeah, there's one question at the back. Two, sorry. So you're talking about the architecture in Colombia and in Latin America being... The architecture nowadays tends to be socially responsive or seems to be getting regionalist. So that's the same question that we deal with architecture in India. Like, the only solution is either you be regionalist or you have a social response to something. So what do you think is the next step forward? Like, how do you break away from this? Yeah, I think that's why... I think you described the situation very well between these two sides. So that's why I want to be disciplinary driven first. If I cannot engage into disciplinary questions, then I fall into one of these buckets. As much as I try hard, not to, but I guess that, for many in your mind, when somebody tells you, okay, architecture from Latin America, you expect an Aravena situation like or one of these things. And I think that it's fantastic that these people exist, that they create the projects they do, but we cannot play the same... I'm not able to play that game. So that's why I try to go disciplinary to the core of it with the risk of burn and fail, but I'm trying. I think that the question you're claiming is rather than a, let's say, you're not questioning socially responsible architecture or regional architecture, but the cliches that you usually are are going hand in hand with many of them. So I think that's basically what I would say is where you frame the... That's true, and it's more contextual to third world countries. So that's what, maybe that's where the question's coming from. Laura, again, sorry? No, the response of architecture is more third world, where you try to be socially responsive or you try to be regionalist. So can discipline drive the architecture in those regions? Or is it like, do you think there's something else to it? No, I think that by force, every project we do or we are engaged, it's socially driven. But I don't feel comfortable highlighting that because it's not necessarily. I mean, I like to be measured and have a discussion within the disciplinary boundary of it, not within the morality or the compromise of how responsible we are with the people that it's around. I mean, we are absolutely responsible. We try to do our best to provide the best quality of architecture within the budget, respecting the client, respecting the local traditions, bringing them and bringing everybody the best that we can do, but I would say it's unfair to try to present ourselves as a social liberator, as a Robin Hood in a way. And I think that overflows the media right now and that's not what we need, I guess. I guess that we need to make ourselves necessary from the points of view that I mentioned before in the sense that you are able to provide a very good building and that can be discussed as architecture that, of course, provides a social service. But let's not discuss the social service in the way. Perfect, thank you. Thank you. A lot of your work seems to be driven by the fact that you're in a mild moderate climate and you don't have the expenses that we have here in the North. Is that one of your main advantages or is there any limitation certain months of the year when basically some projects are less usable or something? You're right, I mean, I guess that's an advantage in the sense that we don't isolate walls. I mean, for us a wall can be 10 centimeters wide and that's pretty much everything. That gives us an advantage in the sense of dealing with the climate, but it's a disadvantage in how limited our material palette is. So we are pretty much boxed to use two or three materials because it's what you get, it's what it's available, it's what labor can make out of it. And in that sense, when you belong to a culture that has seasons, you have something that we don't have which is planning. You have to plan for the winter, you have to plan for the fall, you have to plan for the summer and we don't do it since we have the same climate all year round, three months rain, three months sun, three months rains again, three months rain again and three months sun again, the building is pretty much the same. It's quite boring in that sense, but I guess it's an advantage in the sense that the elements that play the role there are very simple and the code, it's very simple. I mean, from the perspective of liabilities, from the perspective of engineering, it's a very open practice and very free in that sense. And certainly none of the free saw that we have appear in the North, I guess. No, not at all, not at all. If the temperature goes quite low, it will be six degrees and it will be a dawn in perhaps in Bogota, but where I come from, the average is 23 degrees all year round. So when it's cold, it's 14, and when it's warm, it's 30, something like that. So it's the same, the same gap, let's say the same, not the gap, the same line of temperature. It's very stable in that sense. So I think it's an advantage in the sense that you don't have to put too many things onto the architecture. I think we have time for one more question. There's a maximum microphone arriving. I wonder if you could talk about the relationship that you have with the artist that you're working with. I mean, a couple of times you mentioned the photographer, then another photographer, the films obviously are made by a cinematographer. What is the relationship that in the practice, I don't know, for instance, like the printed screens are, if they're your designs or you're working with a graphic designer, I wonder if you could talk about how artists are working with you or you're working with artists to kind of think about your project, your practice. Yeah, yeah, we, I think photography it's fantastic in the sense that it's a way of looking into things. It's a way of letting things in and out of the picture. It's a way of editing what you see. And I think architecture pretty much plays the same role. It suggests some things that could be this or that according to the way you frame or define the spaces around. So we work very close with Camilo Echavarria, this photographer, his topic, somehow recent topic, it's this, what he calls illustrated landscapes. So he's trying to depict the tropical landscapes with the logic of the romantic artist of the late 18th and 19th century. And he creates this collage of images that I showed you before as landscapes. And I found our way of doing architecture in a very similar way. You have a very European frame of looking into things, but then the subject of matter is not European at all, but then you have to put them together within that methodology. So we have these conversations of how we put things together in, I don't know if it's a collage in that sense, but how we put things that contradict itself together. So for the textiles, we work with Joanna Bohannini. She's a graphic and textile designer that works in our office and sometimes on her own. So we were selecting and taking all these pictures around our house, around the office, selecting them, classifying them and making it work within an architecture dialogue. As if it was a piece of masonry cut out and mirrored and duplicated, copied, pasted in different ways, composing an image out of it. And with Camilo Echeverri, the other architect, the other photographer, which happens to be an architect, we have a discussion about how do we engage into architecture as a cultural way of looking into things. Because in Colombia, architecture doesn't occupy the territory of museums or galleries. So there is no discussion between architecture beyond the realm of making buildings. It happens, but it's very selective in the sense that once in a while, some architects, we get together, we have a conversation, we go to a dinner, but that's it. So in this way of operating, moving toward architects and especially photographers, it allows us to understand ways of looking into things. There is this beautiful text by Walter Benjamin about photography, which is called on photography, I guess, in English, where he describes what's the role of the camera? What's the role of the eye? What's the role of the frame? What's the role of the image you are producing? What happens to the image that gets produced? So we try to deal and expand the conversation into that. How do we look at things? And what do they give us back? So I'd like to thank Camilo on behalf of the school for the lecture and for the pleasure of having a conversation as well. Thank you very much. Thank you, Enrique.