Planta primer nivel y planta piso tipo de oficinas. First level plan and typical floor plan of offices.
PLATFORM AND MASSIVE TOWER WITH BALCONIES
The emergence of new forms and architectural scales in the Colombian urban landscape had, by the end of the 50s, almost a decade of assimilation and maturation. The most reputable firms of architects, engineers and builders had been founded by professionals trained totally or partially abroad and were, at that time, at a particularly fruitful stage of their production. Obregón y Valenzuela Ltda. (O y V) was one of them. Their prestige was based on formal rigor and attention to constructive details, largely derived from the trade learned in the United States and trips made to Europe during the 40s and 50s. The rental building designed for Compañía Colombiana de Seguros S.A. in the neighborhood of Chapinero in Bogotá, is part of a series of commissions engaged by the firm in an era of economic dynamism and rapid urban transformations. It is located on Carrera Trece, an important commercial hub in the north of Bogota around which residential neighborhoods of isolated houses were built, and which later gave way to mixed areas characterized by the presence of shops, cinemas and rental buildings, when horizontal property had not yet been implemented. The assignment consisted of a mixed-use building located on a corner. A two-story commercial platform, a seven-story tower and office penthouse and a parking garage, with an area of 5,331 m2. This format was one of the most common, due in part to rules that required continuity of façade at the level of the first floors and height that should not exceed 35 meters, detached on all sides.
A city imagined this way should take the form of a continuum of platforms on which exempt buildings emerged, destined for commercial, business, institutional and residential uses. That city was consolidated only in a few episodes in this sector of Bogotá, some of them carried out by Obregón y Valenzuela. In the Colseguros building, the character of the tower-slab is marked with particular emphasis, formally separating the two volumes by means of strong horizontal and vertical lines in exposed concrete and material contrasts: large glazed planes and stone paneling for the platform; brick and prominent balconies for the side façades of the tower. As solar protection was necessary for the longer sides - east and west - the architects opted for a latticework of windows and deep parapets that contrasted with the thin glass plane characteristic of the American-inspired office building. The work is finished off by a strong setback of the last floor - the penthouse - on which a thick fluted plane emerges hiding the technical floor. Currently the building is occupied by the Ministry of Justice, and although some open areas of the third and penthouse level have been incorporated, its conservation status is good. It is an indication of the care in the details and the validity of the format of the tower and slab to house institutions that require public places and clearly separated offices.
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