Waking up Honda : revitalization of a historical city center

The revitalization project of the historic center of Honda began in 2017 during the course of “Degree Work Seminar”, held at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia. The objective of this course, taught by Professor Cristina Margarita Neira, was to start working on a specific spatial problem of our interest, to which we would give a possible answer through our thesis. In this way, after having chosen the theme of Honda, as a heritage city, but with characteristics of a deteriorating urban center, a research phase began to be developed. That phase, allowed me to delimit the scope that, as an architecture student, I would be able to reach in a future degree job. That is to say, through the development of the final document of the course, a theoretical and research work was obtained, that allowed me to set specific objectives and a possible path to follow in order to respond to the problem posed. Subsequently, the idea of continuing to deepen the issue of Honda through my thesis at the Polytechnic of Turin, also arises from the knowledge I could obtain from it, during the time I lived in Colombia. Due to the intermittent visits I could make to Honda during the last seventeen years of my life, I was able to witness all the changes to which the city has been exposed, due to different social, political and cultural factors given in the area. In this way, the approach of a possible response to the transformation that Honda has undergone, is trying to understand urban dynamics that make it, what it is today and that differentiate it from other heritage towns of Colombia (despite the fact that it also has a lot of points in common with many other places in the country). With this and matched with the compilation of historical and geographical information of the city, I was able to expand my knowledge about the potential that a city like Honda may have due to factors such as its location, its climate and its culture. Following this process of “understanding” the place, it was proposed, together with Professor Paolo Mellano and Professor Monica Muñoz, a work system that could lead the study towards a direction in which, based on a phenomenological analysis of the site (specifically the historical center of Honda), possible future scenarios of the city could be considered and later, project strategies that would respond to these urban dynamics exposed in the phenomenological analysis. In this way, the urban proposal was reached in its entirety, following finally, the architectural proposal. The architectural deepening was carried out in the old beer factory “Bavaria”, currently abandoned. The explanation of why this decision was taken, will be better developed throughout this document, however, it is important to clarify that the basis of this entire investigative process, was the claim of heritage as an instrument of appropriation that allows to preserve the culture and also to potential the development of cities like Honda. With this, I want to say that in addition to the physical factors (such as its large extension in the territory and its location) the old factory of Bavaria was chosen in order to delve a little more about the industrial heritage, that nowadays is very little spread in Colombia.

• Autores: Ángel Salgado, Marcela
• Tipo de recurso: Trabajo de grado de pregrado
• Fecha de publicación: 2020
• Institución: Pontificia Universidad Javeriana
• Repositorio: Repositorio Universidad Javeriana
• Idioma: spa
• OAI Identifier: oai:repository.javeriana.edu.co:10554/48241
• Acceso en línea: http://hdl.handle.net/10554/48241
• Palabra clave: Urban decay; Urban revitalization; Historical city center; Honda; Old beer factory Bavaria; Arquitectura - Tesis y disertaciones académicas; Rehabilitación urbana - Honda (Tolima, Colombia); Desarrollo urbano - Honda (Tolima, Colombia); Bavaria S.A.
• Rights: openAccess
• License: Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 4.0 Internacional