Forest of Hope

Hope Forest is a sport center in the outskirts of Bogotá where the community can practice several sports and take part of different recreational and academic activities that lead to a cooperative community.
This project was made possible thanks to the foundation “Pies Descalzos” founded by the well known singer Shakira and the Spanish ONG “Ayuda en Acción”.
This project is located in the municipally of Soacha, Altos de Cazucá. This lies in a very depressed area that lacks of public infrastructure. This area is known for its security problems and it has become the shelter of thousands of people that have been displaced of their hometowns because of the conflict.
We believe that architecture’s value lies, not only in it, but in what it produces. We are interested in producing actions, change and relationships; this will allow us to develop shapes, patterns or open organizations that act in the construction of social actions. Forest of Hope is what we call an open project, that is a project made out of modules, able to grow, and able to adapt to different situations. It consists on a canopy that is able to grow and change depending on the circumstances.
The Sport Center consists of a 1.744 sqm a horizontal surface and a 700 sqm dome of spatial structure, which “evokes a bunch of trees as a symbol of nature, union n hope in the area of Altos de Cazuca”. The dimensions of the canopy are 22.7m x 30.8m approximately, with a perimeter of 138.198m.
Each of the modules is a polyhedron of 12 surfaces, a dodecahedron. It is a unique piece and it repeats several times to shape the canopy of the sports center.
The structural canopy functions as a beam, supported over the two axes of the columns. The materials used were expanded mesh, round metal pipe and translucent tile.