A Library Hovering in the Chapel in Bogotá, Colombia
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.
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