Arquitectura Expandida

Arquitectura Expandida’s work is characterised by the development of urban negotiations in contexts of geographic, social, economic, and decisional urban peripheries. Such strategies allow for the exploration of alternative forms of community organisation, citizen participation in public policy, and self-management of common spaces. Ultimately, these are processes in which to explore how to live together, while doing, researching, learning, and building together.
In these processes there are constant parameters that define the playing field: a strong asymmetry of power relations within the city; a critical approach to human/urban rights; an inter-scale approach that stems from the study and documentation of controversies at the regional level, or even the planetary scale with a local impact (such as migration or climate change); the demand for policies that mitigate spatial injustices in the city; up to ‘the poetics of the screw’, which is exercised when direct action within communities happens. This action is materialised in complex and long processes of self-construction and collective self-management of common spaces, architecture(s), and landscapes. There is no single recipe for these urban negotiations, since they are based on open organisational models; nevertheless, the practice has developed a series of crosscutting tactics applicable to most of their projects.
These spaces are used for everyday community meetings but are also a vindication in the cultural and ecological dimensions for the popular peripheries of Bogotá: The House of the Rain of Ideas (Casa de La Lluvia de Ideas) (2012– present) is a symbol of the struggle for environmental rights; The Potocinema (La Potocine) (2016–present) denounces, through cinema, the deficit of community cultural spaces. On the other hand, The House of the Wind (La Casa del Viento) (2011–2017) and The Clover Community House (El Trébol) (2014–present) advocate for culture, literature, and urban/street art as cultural integration strategies for the young and the excluded.

Colombian Ministry of Culture Bogota´s Secretariat for Culture
Design Museum of London
Spanish Embassy’s Cultural Council
Ateliers Medicis
Mao Jihong Arts Foundation
Centre Pompidou
Spanish Government – Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda, and Acción Cultural Española (AC/E)

Arquitectura Expandida with the communities and neighborhoods of: San Vicente, La Cecilia, Ciudad de Cali, Potosí and Parques de Bogotá, in Bogotá (CO); Shiyan Village, in Sichuan (CN) and Clichy Sous Bois, in Paris (FR). In association with the community based organizations and of the civil society: Corporación Promotora Cívico Cultural Zuro Riente, Colectivo Territorios-Luchas, Escuela de Cine Comunitaria Ojo al Sancocho, La Francia Skateboarding, la Vereda Films, Monstruación and Golpe de Barrio. In Collaboration with Latura Studio (Juan David Marulanda López), in the production of physical models and outreach material