Colegio Helvetia de Bogotá

The Colegio Helvetia was built in 1954 in Bogotá, the capital of Colombia. It covers an area of 34,000 square metres. The headquarters, designed by the Swiss modernist architect Víctor Schmid, was declared a cultural monument in 1992 and later extended by various architects. These extensions were demolished and replaced by a new, more contemporary infrastructure.

The challenge for the architects was to develop an educational space that would do justice to the new forms of teaching while respecting the listed building.

The building project utilises the strategy of lowering the building by one level to create an English courtyard. It is divided into two wings that are not connected to each other: the smaller primary wing and the longer secondary wing that connects and integrates the existing library. The tips of the two wings are inclined to allow access to the green roof.

The floor plan of the project is rotated and adapted to the existing geometries. Translucent profiled glass distributes light into all rooms and floods them with bright daylight.