Educational park CreSiendo Foundation

Location:
El Rosal, Cundinamarca, Colombia
Type of use:
Educational
Year of construction:
2019
Size:
3.300 m²
Architect:
Fidel Mendoza Arquitectos

Necessity

The Fundación CreSiendo Park directly addresses the needs of a community in El Rosal, Cundinamarca, heavily impacted by internal conflict that concerns
displaced and demobilized populations. It provides a necessary, safe educational infrastructure that rejects the restrictive, traditional classroom. Instead, it embodies a pedagogical model of free learning, discovery, and engagement with the environment, which is vital for social repair and child development in this challenging context. Environmentally, the project is an essential demonstration of a circular economy, utilizing approximately 80% recycled materials such as cement waste, advertising banners, and wooden pallets.

1. Cement Waste: At the start of the project, we discovered a precast concrete factory nearby—roughly 700 meters from the site—that produced curb stones, benches, floor tiles, and other items. Upon realizing this, we approached them, knowing that such facilities generate a high volume of waste from broken materials that cannot be reused in their process. We repurposed this waste to build gabions, which were then used for soil retention, foundations, and internal walls.

2. Billboard Banners: In Colombia, some billboards still use physical banners rather than digital screens, measuring approximately 12 x 4 meters. Once the advertisement is swapped out, these banners are discarded and are notoriously difficult to recycle. We contacted the companies that own these billboards and collected the materials, recognizing that they are engineered to withstand extreme outdoor conditions. We painted them green and used them to cover a large portion of the exterior facade.

3. Wooden Panels: We repurposed waste from the wooden pallets used in the automotive industry to import motorcycles. These pallets are made of pine wood, built to endure weathering and extreme temperature fluctuations. We used them to assemble panels, applying the Japanese Shou Sugi Ban technique. This process not only preserves and immunizes the wood but also gives it a warm, inviting aesthetic.

Ultimately, the spirit of this project was not only to be environmentally and socially sustainable but also educational. From the very beginning, we wanted children to understand that the world can be perceived in two or more ways, that everything they know can be transformed into something entirely new.

Affordability

The Fundación CreSiendo achieves 100% accessibility for all local users, the children and families of El Rosal’s Campo Alegre neighborhood. As a non-profit educational center, it provides highly subsidized access to its program, directly benefiting a community with limited economic means. The construction process incorporated approximately 80% recycled, locally sourced waste materials, significantly reducing costs compared to conventional building methods. Additionally, planting campaigns were carried out with the community and families. This hands-on collaboration made the building a shared project, successfully awakening a strong sense of belonging and collective ownership, a vital non-financial component of long-term social sustainability.

Simplicity and Appropriateness

The Fundación CreSiendo Park achieves thermal comfort through a passive, low-tech design that minimizes technological dependency while remaining closely tied to the local economy. Rather than adopting the conventional sealed-box model, the architecture takes inspiration from the large flower nurseries that define El Rosal’s main industry. In this particular climate, this reference is not only symbolic but also functional. The building is enclosed with a sustainably manufactured UV-protection film made from recycled materials, which filters and diffuses daylight to create soft, homogeneous natural lighting suitable for learning spaces. At the same time, the east-west façades remain open to allow constant cross-ventilation, supported by roof vents that prevent overheating and avoid the greenhouse effect. This strategy is especially effective in El Rosal, where temperatures typically fluctuate between 8°C and 20°C during the day, with occasional early-morning frosts reaching -2°C.

Additional comfort is provided by vegetation walls that protect the classrooms both thermally and acoustically. Their dense plant layers act as a living filter: they cool the surrounding air through evapotranspiration, provide broken and discontinuous shading, and reduce direct solar heat gain more effectively than a conventional solid wall that would absorb and re-radiate heat. At the same time, their irregular, soft, and porous surfaces diffuse and absorb sound, reducing echoes and creating a calmer learning environment that supports concentration and lowers stress.

The project’s passive comfort strategy is further reinforced by recycled concrete gabion walls, which work together with natural ventilation as part of a dual-inertia system. During the day, the gabions act as thermal mass, absorbing and stabilizing heat to moderate indoor temperature fluctuations. This is particularly important in a climate with strong diurnal swings and frequent frosts. The concrete used in these gabions is salvaged from a precast plant located only 700 meters away, while wood-based panels in the caretakers’ quarters are repurposed from motorcycle import pallets. Together, these recycled materials create a high-performance building envelope through a circular economy approach. The result is a site-specific architecture that delivers comfort, light, ventilation, and acoustic quality with minimal reliance on mechanical heating, air conditioning, or other complex systems.

Sufficiency and Efficiency

By leveraging approximately 80% recycled local waste materials such as gabion fill, banners and pallets, and using the economic structure of the flower nurseries, the project drastically reduced material procurement costs, ensuring it is approximately 90% cheaper than a common structure. On the other hand, the design's passive approach minimizes technological dependency. Using a recycled plastic cover provides optimal natural light, making the use of electric lighting during the day unnecessary. The building also uses rainwater runoff to maintain the interior gardens, demonstrating a closed-loop approach to water management using a recycled plastic bottle system. Coupled with the thermal mass of gabion walls, the design proves that passive systems and local resources are sufficient for a qualitative, comfortable, and dignified infrastructure.

Scalability

The project was designed for maximum local integration and feasibility, relying heavily on existing local labor and material supply chains. It utilized local waste materials and the community's skill set, requiring minimal specialized technology. Furthermore, community members and families were integrated into the construction and later operation through planting campaigns, ensuring local knowledge transfer. We ensure cultural integration by adopting the flower nursery structure that not only saved costs but ensured immediate cultural recognition and community connection to the architecture, as it references the local main economy. In the pedagogical way the main entrance requires all adults to "bend in respect" to enter. This symbolic act fundamentally adapts the space to its primary users, reinforcing the foundation's core mission of prioritizing the child's perspective and free learning over traditional hierarchy. Also, integration was formalized through community participation in construction ensuring collective ownership and long-term social sustainability.

Beauty

The design is a profound reflection of the local culture and an investigation into how the environment affects the educational growth of a child. Instead of importing external aesthetics, the architecture is an intentional, functional adaptation of a local flower nursery structure, referencing El Rosal's main economy to achieve immediate cultural recognition and belonging. The material palette is defined by resourcefulness: recycled waste forms the primary structure, proving that waste is a powerful construction resource. Further aligning with the project's purpose, the child-scaled main entrance is a cultural intervention that translates the pedagogical value into an architectural act of respect, fundamentally prioritizing the young primary user.

Unique Principles of Success

1. Architecture as a Pedagogical Tool

The project's success stems from its foundational commitment to shifting education from "teaching" to "learning." The design is the result of intensive research into the relationship between architecture and pedagogy. It rejects the traditional classroom model, which limits interaction and discovery. Instead, the philosophy centers on creating a free, spontaneous, and non-limiting environment where a child can observe, investigate, move, and relate to their entire socio-cultural and spatial context.

Prioritizing the Child's Perspective: This philosophy is physically embodied by the child-scaled main entrance and topography. This architectural detail demands that every adult entering the building must perform a "bend of respect" and enter a world for kids, where everything is designed from a kid-scale perspective. We literally used their height as the primary design guide.

2. Material Sufficiency and Cost Reduction

The project's innovative approach lies in its radical commitment to material sufficiency and achieving high quality through low-cost, local resources. Approximately 80% of all construction materials are recycled local waste. This strategy was not just environmental but also a fundamental economic decision, resulting in the building being approximately 95% more cost-effective than a common structure of the same scale. Construction utilized upcycled materials (industrial debris): gabion walls were filled with scrap from local cement and marble factories, fencing was made from repurposed advertising billboards (banners), and the caretaker’s house was built from motorcycle import pallets treated using the traditional Japanese Shou Sugi Ban technique.

3. Strong Local Link

The building's form is an intentional adaptation of a local flower nursery, referencing El Rosal’s main economic sector. This design choice provided a highly economic, easily replicable, and culturally relevant structure. It ensured immediate cultural recognition and a deep community connection to the architecture.

4. Incorporation of Passive Climate Strategies

The project achieves necessary comfort with minimal technological dependency, resulting in significant operational savings. The recycled plastic cover over the nursery structure allows for homogeneous natural light, achieving 100% savings on daytime electric lighting. Gabion walls provide massive thermal mass, coupled with vegetation walls and natural cross-ventilation, eliminating the need for mechanical cooling or heating. This is crucial for El Rosal’s climate, where early morning frosts can drop temperatures to -2°C (28°F). Additionally, integrated rainwater harvesting systems maintain the interior gardens, demonstrating a closed-loop approach.

5. Stakeholder Involvement

The project ensured the community's needs were met by implementing a participatory decision-making process. Given that the floriculture industry accounts for approximately 75% of local employment, we conducted extensive workshops and communal planting sessions. Families and future users contributed to the construction of their own "living classrooms" and gardens. This hands-on collaboration made the building a shared collective project, instilling a critical sense of ownership and long-term commitment.

It is important to highlight that this was a deeply communal project where everyone was involved. However, it also demonstrates the power of architecture when guided by a clear conceptual roadmap. Initially, we were hired simply to place 300 $m^2$ of shipping containers on the lot because the foundation's budget could not afford more.

Parallel to this, our team initiated two investigations: one to truly know the community we were designing for, and another on the relationship between architecture and pedagogy (the real power of a learning environment for a child). Thanks to this research, we understood that we didn't need containers; we needed to create a "living nursery" for the children. By following this conceptual path, we transformed a logistical need into a transformative educational space.

Limitations

The project’s primary challenge was financial constraint, which became the driving force behind one of its most innovative principles: building with non-standardized waste streams instead of conventional construction materials. This approach required unconventional construction techniques, careful adaptation to irregular materials, and rigorous quality control, making the process more technically demanding than building with new, standardized components.

Another major limitation was the social process required to make the project viable in the long term. Building trust in Campo Alegre demanded time, continuous presence, and sustained community engagement. The neighborhood is home to displaced families affected by Colombia’s long internal conflict, many of whom have experienced broken promises, corruption, and deep institutional neglect. In this context, trust could not be assumed; it had to be earned gradually. Insecurity and local social tensions added further complexity, particularly at the beginning of the project, when it was essential to engage marginalized groups and shift their relationship to the building from potential hostility to shared responsibility and protection. Although this slowed rapid execution, it was essential to securing collective ownership and the project’s long-term survival.

Despite these constraints, the project demonstrates strong potential for scalability because its core logic does not depend on advanced technology. Its low-tech, passive design principles and significant cost savings make the model highly transferable to other resource-constrained contexts, particularly in climates like those of Colombia. At the same time, replication requires careful local adaptation. The specific waste materials used in construction must be replaced by locally available waste streams, and the architectural language should respond to the destination’s own economy, culture, and environmental conditions rather than directly reproducing the flower nursery reference of El Rosal.

Links & Downloads

Project: https://www.fidelmendoza.co/fu...

Foundation: https://fundacioncresiendo.org...

Initial video for the Presentation to the community (the project changed since the presentation due to the workshops results with them): https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Educational park CreSiendo Foundation

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