Monument for the Cumbre De Las Americas in  Santa Cruz De La Sierra, Bolivia
1996
With Luis Fernandez De Cordova And Roda Srl

Project
1996

Realization
1996

Location
City Park of Santa Cruz de la Sierra , Bolivia

Commissioned by
City of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, in occasion of the meeting of the Presidents of the Americas

Architects Partner
Luis Fernadez de Cordova and Roda s.r.l., Architects, Santa Cruz

Volume
2'300 m³ for each tower


This work was built in occasion for the Cumbre sobre Desarollo Sostenible (to mark the summit of sustainable growth), in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, the Bolivian city chosen for the meeting of the presidents of North and South America. The project is called for an entrance area to the park, which functions as a vital green space within the historic city, a rectangular urban void surrounded by a series of concentric commuter roads leading out to the outlying neighborhoods. The project foresees the consolidation of the two corners of the park adjacent to the city, and the building of two multi-level towers providing a series of linked interior stairways set within the walls, leading to a series of balconies, from which people can look down and enjoy the three-dimensional structure of the city. At their summits the two towers house technical spaces, and by night they are linked to each other by a luminous ray of laser light that creates a kind of city gate. On the ground floor the two corner buildings are connected by a long line of stone slabs that marks a stream punctuated at regular intervals by fountains, and which runs the entire two-hundred-meter length of the front of the park. The 'L' shaped form of the tower walls, a mass that is both open and divided in sections, is remarkable for providing both an 'inside' and an 'outside'. This reinforces both its role as an angular reference point and the excavated, sculptural quality of the work, a quality that offers an architectonic 'journey' towards new viewpoints to the landscape below. This monument, even if symbolic, is very clear in the reading of its functions, delightfully evoking a mood of recreation and relaxation. It even becomes a recognizable part of the park entrance, reinvented as a signal, a way of linking up with and relating to the context.