A Library Hovering in the Chapel in Bogotá, Colombia

Abstract

The chapter considers the potential of repurposing disused religious buildings for use as libraries and examines an exemplary model of library adaptive reuse in a cultural heritage context: La Capilla, the Biblioteca Satélite de Arquitectura y Diseño at Universidad de los Andes/University of the Andes (Uniandes) in Bogotá, Colombia. The author outlines the La Capilla project in detail, including the larger context of adaptive reuse in the Uniandes campus and in Bogotá. The architectural strategy used in the La Capilla conversion was an almost freestanding structural insertion placed inside an unaltered historic shell. The history of the Uniandes campus and the city of Bogotá is explored. Two other church to library conversion case studies are briefly examined to conclude that architectural intervention in culturally significant buildings can enhance public understanding of history while simultaneously serving library programmatic needs.