Aulatopía
Taller Ciudad Portatil, in collaboration with engineering students from Corhuila University, designed a monument-pavilion in the city of Neiva, Colombia. The office describes the project as follows:
Aulatopía, is a commissioned monument-pavilion, which commemorates the first 20 years of Industrias Carvicam, a family business of great importance for the economy and local employment of the city of Neiva in Colombia, dedicated to the manufacturing and marketing of school furniture.
Through co-design strategies and a collaborative work system between Taller Ciudad Portatil and engineering students from the Corhuila University, a proposal is built that operates as a manager of citizen interactions at different scales in the public space of the city, conceived reinterpreting the traditional trapezoidal tables and chairs, designed and produced by Industrias Carvicam for more than two decades.
The intervention is made up of benches, chairs, tables, library furniture and coat racks, which are repeated 2 and 3 times to reach a total of 25 trapezoidal school furniture that, due to its geometric and formal condition, generate a versatile pattern that allows different spatial configurations. They explore the dematerialization of a conventional classroom, taking it to the public space. Transforming a common classroom into a utopian or “impossible” scenario.
The installation is designed in such a way that it is easy to transport and manipulate, so each of the furniture works independently, but with the ability to adapt and join together through an independent system of anchors and mobile-rotating devices. that facilitate the idea of achieving different configurations that make the monument-pavilion different and transformable all the time.
In this way, the celebration of the 20 years of existence of the local company Industrias Carvicam is symbolized with the creation of a public work of art that highlights the virtues of the emblematic trapezoidal tables, chairs and furniture and turns them into a new space public collective meeting located in the plaza of the Events and Convention Center of the city of Neiva.