Milla de Oro. By: Juliana Betancur

Design concepts that have shaped MedellinColombias second largest city, Medelln, is located in the Aburr Valley, a central region of the Andes Mountains in South America. It was founded in 1616 by Francisco He-rrera Campuzano, one of the Spaniards who came in order to conquer the new world. It started from what we called in the present day El Poblado commune and nowadays it has expanded to the hillside of the valley.

The city has been one of a kind regarding to industrial dynamism since the beginning of the 21st century, mostly due to the construction of the Medellin Metro commuter rail and the proliferation of the textile industry mixed-up with liberalized development policies.

Historically it has been also considered one of the most dangerous cities in world due to all his past linked to the drug cartels, nevertheless the city has used urbanism and archi-tecture as one of the resources to show the world that we have overcome this past and the city is no longer what it was. Social urbanism is the path we have been using since 2004 to promote peace and social equity. The development of urban projects that would transform the physical environment while promoting profound social and cultural shifts were focused in this areas. Some of them are libraries, sports courts and easier and innovative ways of transportation like the citys first Metrocable gondola line.

In February 2013, Medellin was chosen as the most innovative city in the world due to its improvement in politics, education and social development. In the same year it also won the Veronica Rudge Urbanism Award conferred by the Harvard University for the Nor-th-Western integral development project in the city and on 2014 it hosted the UN-Habi-tat's 7th World Urban Forum.

Modernist city designAs we have learned on the past weeks, this type of city design influenced by well-known artists and architects such as Le Corbussier and Walter Gropius, is based on high rise housing in order to conserve open spaces with elevated highways, plain walls, flat roofs and non historical orna-ment with the addition nowadays of the impro-vement of engineering who brought as conse-quence an unimaginable variety of shapes and forms buildable.

Milla de oro by Alejando Osorio Agudelo, taken from:http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1671491

Medellin is integrated by 16 communes and divided by the river with the city name. Being as diverse as it is, it also features this type of city design, especially in the Poblado Commune (the fourteen commune). One of the most important streets there (Street 43A) commonly known as the Poblado avenue is where La milla de oro (The Golden Mile) is found. The name of this sector of the city comes from the commercial, touristic and industrial importance of it. Situated on the south-center of the city, stands out for its modern buildings, spaces for commerce, hotels, casinos, offices and specialized stores, above several banks, high class restaurants, cafe-terias and a clinic.

Av. El Poblado by Deivid4, taken from:http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1671491

Hotel San Fernando Plaza by Dual Time, taken from:http://www.umbral.co/arrendamientos/arrendamientos?view=property&id=33

Traditional city designGoing back some several centuries back and ins-pired in the renaissance weve got this type of city design in which a series of long straight streets, parks and boulevards are used to con-nect important destinations. Also classical art museums and groups of civic buildings are loca-ted in city parks or become the center of radia-ting avenues. All of this looking forward to pro-vide the concept of organization that the mo-dernist cannot provide.

Photos by: Juliana Betancur

La AlpujarraAntioquias Railroad

Carr Building

At Medellin we found numerous examples of this type of city design. One of them is the Parque del Poblado (Poblado Park) where this city started, and the Spanish left us various traditions such as the catholic culture where the church became one of the main parts of the plaza or central park, thats the reason why we can find plenty of churches being the center of the plazas in the principal parks of the city, usually connected by the same street. Another example is located at the city center where we can see civic buildings such as the Alpujarra where the federal government radicates and we can also find one of the most important museums of the city El Museo de Antioquia.

Parque del Poblado. By: Juliana Betancur

Green city designBased on ancestral Asian landscape influences and mixed up with the development in environmental design and engineer we found this type of city design that looks forward to discover and evolve different ways to integrate the natural landsca-pes into the design for cities taking into account new factors such as climate change and realizing the urgent need of adaptation by applying new ways to organize the natural environment and create new conditions that will evolve into natu-ral systems over time.

Botanical Garden from http://www.imageek.biz/1794-description-jardin-botanico-de-medellin-bosque-tropical-2

In our case this dilemma into nature and techno-logy its also treated by integrating a system of natural parks or places where people can inte-ract with the environment. One of them is loca-ted also in the Poblado commune, known as La Presidenta Park. As another example of this we have the Botanical Garden Joaqun Antonio Uribe, located at the north part of the city, where 14 hectares of land are intended to preserve not only our flora but also part of our fauna giving the people a space to get connected with its culture and natural wealth.

We can also see an important evolution in green construction with buildings that share in common technology that helps us both fighting and preserving nature. For example the engineer faculty of EAFITs University made with top A te-chnology in order to preserve nature and improve the use of renewable natural resources.

Engineer faculty, EAFIT. By: Juliana Betancur

References-The urban transformation of Medellin, Colombia. (21 August 2012) Recovered from: http://architectureindevelopment.org/news.php?id=49

-How Medellin went from cartel center to urban superstar. Huffington Post. (31 March 2014). Reco-vered from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/31/medellin-_n_5065474.html

-Medellin (n.d). Wikipedia. Recovered from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medell%C3%ADn