AGENdA with Camilo Echavarría and Camilo Echeverri

Medellin, Colombia

BIENNIAL PROJECT

MIES Understandings

AGENdA makes architecture representative of the regional and contextual nature of the tropics.

For AGENdA founder Camilo Restrepo, the potential of this region lies in the way that the local environment and climate provided resistance to emulation of modernist ideals of European form; thus, ideas implemented have been inverted to suit local needs. Disciplinary problems—for example the period’s fascination with see-through glass facades—in the tropics transformed into questions of veiling rather than transparency. AGENda’s installation invokes the famous corporate invention of the 20th century that skinned many high-rise facades: the glass curtain wall. In Mies van der Rohe’s architecture the curtain wall was both this sheer glass technical facade system and a velvet and silk textile partition.

Noting this duality, AGENdA lines their walkway with a literal curtain, a velvet sheath coated in images of tropical flora that wraps the installation perimeter in a composition reminiscent of the walls of Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion and Tugendhat House. These curtains shape five niches that exhibit the architecture and the landscape of the coffee growing region of Suroeste located 100 km southwest from Medellín. It is shown through portraits of AGENdA’s Farallones comunitary coffee wet mill, vernacular architecture and 19th century coffee wet mills. Pictures are taken by photographer Camilo Echeverri, and landscape depictions are by Camilo Echavarría.

BIO

AGENdA agencia de arquitectura is located in Medellin, Colombia. AGENdA searches for possible architectures, no matter the scale or location. AGENdA articulates dialogues, projects, and questions regarding architecture disciplinary issues and architecture practice from a condition of crossroad between tropic conditions, history, and disciplinary matters—with special attention to uncertain conditions—as a response to specific realities and context.

AGENdA was founded by Camilo Restrepo Ochoa in 2010. Camilo Restrepo Ochoa is a graduate of Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana in Medellin. He has been a guest lecturer at Harvard Graduate School of Design since 2014. Camilo was nominated for the 2014 MCHAP prize, the 2014 BSi Prize, and was one of the three finalists for the 2012 Rolex Protégé.

Camilo Echavarría (Medellín, 1970), approaches landscape as a cultural thus subjective entity focusing on the presence of man either as an observer, an inhabitant or an agent of transformation. His practice involves photography and photo-based video work and diffuses visual and conceptual frontiers between both mediums. His ongoing project, Atlas of the Andes comprises works made along the northern Andes mountain chain in Colombia, Ecuador and Perú during the last eight years.

Camilo holds a Bachelor's degree in Science from Southern New Hampshire University and a Masters degree in Art History from Universidad de Antioquia. His work has been part of group shows in Bogotá, Lima, Houston, San Salvador and Medellín and is part of Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (New York), Colección Jan Mulder (Lima), Colección Banco BBVA (Bogotá), and Museo de Antioquia (Medellín) among other collections.

Biennial Project: AGENdA with Camilo Echavarría and Camilo Echeverri, MIES Understandings, 2017. Photo courtesy of Chicago Architecture Biennial / Steve Hall