V Bienal de Arquitectura Latinoamericana. BAL2017 en Pamplona

Abstract

La celebración el pasado mes de abril de una nueva edición, la quinta, de la Bienal de Arquitectura Latinoamericana BAL2017 congregó en Pamplona a una selección de quince equipos de arquitectos jóvenes latinoamericanos, provenientes de siete países. Con la inclusión de los trabajos enviados por bienalistas de ediciones anteriores, fueron en total treinta y dos los equipos y ocho los países representados, convirtiendo a Pamplona por unos días en un escaparate del mejor presente de la arquitectura emergente latinoamericana.

The celebration last April of a new edition, the fifth edition of the BAL2017 Biennial of Latin American Architecture, brought together in Pamplona a selection of fifteen teams of young Latin American architects from seven countries. With the inclusion of the works sent by biennialists of previous editions, there were a total of thirty-two teams and eight countries represented, making Pamplona in a showcase of the best emerging Latin American architecture for a few days.

The Biennial, which also offers its programs in Madrid and Barcelona, has two parts: one in which a guest country, Colombia in this case, stars in the conferences and debates that this time focused almost thematically on the well-known social achievements achieved in Medellín and Bogotá with the strategic use of architecture as an effective tool of social action, and a second where the selected teams presented their work. What has been seen has been a set of proposals of great interest and quality, with programs as small as single-family housing to as large as an intermodal center or a government building; with environments that range from the urban periphery, the historic center or the lush landscape. A set that conveys a feeling of optimism before an architecture with commitment, with reflection, with an ethical attitude in the proportion between the means and the ends pursued, with a constructive emphasis in the approaches. An architecture with a preferential option for the most with less that has a lot of common sense and a lot of ambition and intensity in the contents and that developed in an environment lacking the suffocating European regulations produces results that seen from this periphery are enviable.