Medellín lies in a valley. Its water reservoirs are located atop the surrounding hills. This project shows how disused water tanks can be adapted to serve people in other ways.

The intervention that Colectivo 720 proposed, and with which they won the city’s competition, is diverse and comprehensive. Previously inaccessible, the entire area, including the two disused tanks and the two new ones, will be fully open to the public as a park and venue for cultural events and sports activities – the uses are virtually unlimited. The site is uninterrupted and linked to the various surrounding neighborhoods.

Luis Tombé, one of the young architects behind the project explains: “For us it was clear from the beginning that we wanted to preserve the site’s positive qualities and create a multifunctional facility – using what already exists.”

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The creation of public space through the project Articulated Site: Water reservoirs as public park is under way at UVA Orfelinato in Medellín. The project forms part of a network of parks, and ten of the 14 sites will have been completed and open to the public by the end of 2015.

The winners of the 4th Global Holcim Awards for Sustainable Construction have been decided – the trophies and USD 350,000 prize money go to projects in Colombia, Sri Lanka and the USA. All three prizes recognize architectural interventions that deliver tangible benefits to local communities: Turning a decommissioned water reservoir into a park in Medellín, rebuilding social fabric through a community library in Ambepussa following Sri Lanka’s civil war, and creating public zones and flood-protection for the island of Manhattan.

Great care went into the further development of the project, with particular attention given to the elaboration of construction and landscape details that strengthen the overall objective of the proposal. A hidden infrastructure within the city is opened up, made public, and transformed into a civic space – one situated at the intersection of architecture, landscape, infrastructure and urban design. The jury applauds the careful integration of the ensemble into the physical and social fabric of Medellín, reading the scheme as a robust proposition that fulfils all criteria set forth by the Holcim Foundation.

The project foregrounds the value of water as an important resource of urban life, celebrating a piece of infrastructure as a civic work of collective pride and beauty – another step in the transformation of Medellín from a troubled city a decade ago into a city with a high quality of life, from a place of neglect to a place of hope.

It is in this respect that the jury considers the scheme to offer a model of best practice, one to be emulated in other cities, whether in Latin America or around the globe. 

As one of the three main Holcim Awards winners for Latin America in 2014, “Articulated Site” automatically qualified as a finalist in the Global Holcim Awards 2015. All 15 finalist project teams were asked to submit an updated and more comprehensive entry that was evaluated by a global jury in March 2015.

View project entry posters - Global Holcim Awards

The results of the global phase of the 4th Holcim Awards competition were announced on April 20, 2015.

Read full media release - Sustainable design improving communities

The winners of the global phase of the 4th International Holcim Awards competition will be revealed on April 20, 2015. The results will be announced via the Holcim Awards website.

Mario Camargo from Colectivo 720 in Colombia says his Holcim Awards Gold winning project builds a bridge between the needs of people and their city. “Articulated Site: Water reservoirs as public park” in Medellín, Colombia. The project is situated at the intersection of a range of disciplines pertaining to the definition of the built environment, ranging from landscape and urban design to architecture and infrastructure planning. 

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Aníbal Gaviria, Mayor of Medellín, together with Andreas Leu, Member of the Executive Committee of Holcim Ltd, Jaime Hill, CEO of Holcim Colombia, and Bruno Stagno, Head of the Awards jury from Costa Rica, presented the Holcim Awards Gold for Latin America to a project to be constructed in the host city. Architects Mario Camargo and Luis Tombé together with Juan Calle, Director of EPM, received the top prize for their landscape and urban design project for a public park in Medellín.

Aníbal Gaviria noted the opportunity for the architectural concept of the project to be multiplied across many public water storage sites in the city. Medellín was chosen as host city for the Holcim Awards ceremony in Latin America due to its commitment to sustainable infrastructure to meet community needs and ensure progress.

The 12 winning projects of the Holcim Awards 2014 for Latin America focus mainly on adaptability and social performance, and show how sustainable construction is developing multi-disciplinary responses to the challenges facing design and building. A public park above a series of reservoirs in Medellín, a low-impact timber rainforest center in Costa Rica and a pedagogically-aligned school in Mexico were awarded gold, silver and bronze.

Exploring uncharted terrain, the project is situated at the intersection of a range of disciplines pertaining to the definition of the built environment, ranging from landscape and urban design to architecture and infrastructure planning. The jury values the important steps undertaken by the design team to explore the interrelationship of fields of expertise that are normally treated as isolated domains. The submitted design, in this sense, embraces – in a refined and poetic manner – the multiple criteria set forth by the Holcim Foundation’s “target issues”. Aesthetic, social, economic and environmental concerns are combined to form a sophisticated ensemble of public spaces, merging social imperatives with technical requirements to create a “socio-technical” landscape of magnificent beauty.

From a multidisciplinary vantage point, this project for a public park in Medellín, Colombia, centers on the creation of spaces around and above a series of water reservoirs. Tracing the site’s history, the architectural form takes its inspiration from the surrounding topography as well as from the structure of the existing tanks and pools, resulting in an intervention with minimal environmental impact.