Project material
- Category
- Commercial & Institutional
- Typology
- Business park
- Year
- 2018
- Area
- 2.350 m²
- Location
- Samacá, Boyacá
- City
- Samacá, Boyacá
- Status
- Portfolio
Commercial and office architecture
Cuatro Esquinas sits in Samacá, Boyacá, at the road crossing that gives the project its name. It is a cold-climate town ringed by green hills, with a fabric of one- and two-storey houses in exposed brick, corner shops and tiled roofs that appear all at once when you look down on them. The corner lot measures 1.620 m² and faces both roads of the crossing.
Instead of occupying the edge, the building steps back. The volume folds into an L against the boundaries and leaves the corner free, so it works as a courtyard open to the town: vehicle access, surface parking, low planters and a playground. The shops take the street level in a continuous frontage; the offices stack above them, with terraces and planters spilling toward the crossing. At the rear a 4.50 m setback separates the building from its neighbours.
The section does the rest of the climatic work: courtyards cut out of the slabs bring light to the centre of the floor plate and let warm air out at the top, while the set-back corner opens cross ventilation from the free space. The materials are those of the region's building trade — exposed concrete frame, clay brick, timber screens — and the office programme is completed by an auditorium.
From a shopping centre to a building that makes a square.
The commission arrived in 2017 as a proposal for a shopping centre for Carbones Andinos: shops on the ground floor, offices above and, on the top level, the company's conference room and boardroom. The first sketch understood that in a small town the problem was not the shopfront but the ground: if the building hugged the corner, the crossing would close up. The process diagrams show the sequence that resolved it — outlining the lot, stacking the uses, pulling the volume back, cutting the courtyards, testing the sun — and the construction photographs, with the concrete frame still bare among the town's houses, show that decision already built: the corner remains public space.
- 01 / 08
The corner lot, 1.620 m² between the two roads of the crossing, with the 4.50 m rear setback marked against the neighbours: the starting point for the whole project.
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The uses stack in two L-shaped bands: retail open to the street below, offices above. The shape of the building is, literally, the sum of those two bands.
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Access and parking are resolved inside the lot, along its inner edge, so the crossing does not become a manoeuvring bay.
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The set-back: the volume slides toward the rear and leaves the corner free. The two marked end walls are the ones that announce the project from each road.
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Courtyards cut out of the slabs. Each void is a way in for light to the centre of a deep floor plate and a way out for warm air above.
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Sun and ventilation check: the solar path drops through the courtyards while air enters from the free corner and crosses the plan.
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Construction: the concrete frame and clay masonry mid-assembly, with the structural rhythm that later orders the façade.
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Construction in context: the building rising within Samacá's low-rise fabric, with the hills of the valley behind.
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