User:Perachora

ROGELIO SALMONA

Colombian architect Rogelio Salmona has translated pragmatic and poetic concepts and intentions into physical form.These result from the architect's deep communion with and understanding of the materials and processes, as well as of the historic-cultural context in which his architectural intervention takes place. Traditional materials such as brick and stone, or unexpected materials such as water and wind are combined to interact with and heighten in a wonderful manner, the surroundings; the immediate, defined by the architecture, as well as the distant, consisting of the landscape. Salmona has managed to re-create, through this rigorous architectonic practice, a world of buildings and architectural complexes of great presence and robustness that speak of a particular reality always related to the sense of the place. Salmona's oeuvre, including such notable examples as the Torres del Parque (1967) in Bogotá, the Presidential House for Illustrious Guests (1981) in Cartagena, the Quimbaya Museum (1983) in Armenia and the National Archive of the Nation (1992), the remodeling of the Jimenez Avenue (2000), and the Virgilio Barco Library (2002) in Bogotá, is without doubt one of the most prolific and significant of those produced on this continent during the past fifty years. Salmona has, deservedly but unfortunately, gained world recognition very slowly in the last decade. Evidence of this are several distinctions among which the coveted Alvar Aalto Prize in 2003, followed last year by the Colombian Order of Boyacá bestowed by the Presidency of the Republic of Colombia, in the degree of Great Cross, the highest distinction given to a Colombian citizen. This year, he received the Lapiz de Acero Prize  for his work. This the most distinguished award given to designers in Colombia. In 2006, the Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Culture in cooperation with the Society of Colombian Architects, SCA (Bogotá, D.E., and Cundinamarca), organized and mounted an itinerant exhibition entitled Rogelio Salmona: Open Spaces/Collective Spaces. This show, accompanied by an illustrated descriptive catalogue, opened at the Museum of Modern Art in Bogotá in June 2006. Ever since, the exhibition has opened in various European venues, the most recent at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.