Fábrica de Cultura: BAQ Inauguration

Developed by ETHZ at Urban-Think Tank (U-TT) in collaboration with an international network of partners such as Universidad del Norte (Uni-Norte), the Fábrica de Cultura: BAQ will provide a “maker space” for teaching young people the creative arts and popular traditions centered around Barranquilla‘s Carnival. Operated by the municipality, the facility will offer cultural education, in music, dance, sculpture, dress making, painting poetry, theater, food production, digital film and audio techniques, to all residents but especially to the popular Barrio Abajo.

The low-cost design, which utilizes local materials and processes of prefabrication, adopts open building principles to establish a creative framework that can be modified and reprogrammed by users over time. Working closely with engineers from the Universidad del Norte in Barranquilla, as well as experts in sustainable building technology from the Chair of Architecture and Building Systems (formerly Architecture & Sustainable Building Technologies - SuAT Chair) at ETH Zurich, the aim was to develop a flexible building prototype and construction system that can be replicated throughout the region.

The Fábrica de Cultura: BAQ project is sponsored by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), and coordinated by the Inter-American Development Bank as part of the Emerging and Sustainable Cities Initiative. In September 2016, the project was recognized with an International Architecture Award from the Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design.