Forma Del Agua: Shape Of Water: A Regenerative Architecture Project That Transforms The Water Cycle Into A Habitable Experience Harmonic With The Páramo | Bachelor’s Design Thesis On Architecture And Territory

Site Context

The project is located in the Belmira páramo, a strategic high-mountain ecosystem in northwestern Colombia. This territory is characterized by its high altitude, constant fog, porous soils, and endemic vegetation, making it a natural water factory. The ecological fragility of the páramo demands a non-invasive architecture — one that integrates with the topography, dialogues with the climate, and respects the natural water cycles.

The architectural program arises from this sensitivity. It is composed of three interconnected buildings along a sensory and landscape-based path: the Museum of Water, the Walkers’ Station, and the Observatory. These structures house permanent and temporary exhibition halls, floodable public spaces, administrative areas, scientific research facilities, and open contemplative points. The design prioritizes the use of permeable materials, visible drainage strategies, active roofs, and platforms that do not interrupt ecological flows but rather integrate them into the spatial language.

Design Process

The design process was built from a sensitive approach to place. The initial weeks were dedicated to reading the landscape: site visits, ecological mapping, topographical analysis, and the study of hydrological behavior in the páramo. From there, the three moments of water were defined as the conceptual structure of the project.

In the following stages, the focus shifted to translating atmospheric phenomena into spatial devices: voids, patios, platforms, terraces, and permeable walls. Physical and digital models were developed to test water behavior in contact with architecture, alongside diagrams that explored relationships between climate, form, and materiality.

The pedagogical approach of the studio was experimental and reflective, prioritizing sensory experience over formal efficiency. Week by week, construction details, circulation systems, structural voids, and ecological integration strategies were refined. In the end, the project was consolidated as an architectural manifesto on designing within living ecosystems — proposing a form of architecture that does not tame the landscape, but amplifies it.

Final Outcome

The proposal is composed of three buildings that correspond to three moments of the water cycle: the Museum of Water (precipitation), the Walkers’ Station (runoff), and the Observatory (condensation). Each one represents not only a physical state of water but also a unique sensory and spatial experience. The project does not seek to impose an object on the landscape, but rather to integrate itself into it respectfully, fluidly, and poetically — turning the experience of water into inhabitable architecture.

In this study, the void becomes a central design element — not as absence, but as an active device that allows the passage of water, light, air, and the human body. It is through the void that the project breathes, adapts, and transforms with the climate. Roofs become active surfaces for collecting rain and fog, floors turn into water mirrors, and walls become climatic thresholds. Water is not just channeled technically, but celebrated, made visible, and turned into narrative and sensory matter.

The Museum of Water is the first building on the journey: a large basin where rain falls, is collected, and made visible. With vertical voids, patios, fissures, and an inclined roof, the museum is not just a container for exhibitions — it experiments with water as an atmospheric performance. The architecture is built as a porous system, open to the rain, where exhibition and experience merge.

The Walkers’ Station is a horizontal gesture that blends with the terrain. Through platforms, paths, and cuts in the slab, the architecture becomes both infrastructure for water and a space for movement. There are no walls or defined boundaries — just a transit system that follows the runoff and allows visitors to see, touch, and hear the flowing water.

The journey concludes at the Observatory, a space where water has become fog. Here, the architecture is light, subtle, composed of pavilions that fade with the weather. The space does not impose a route but suggests paths through voids, porous walls, and shallow water mirrors that reflect and evaporate. This building is a tribute to the intangible, to atmosphere, to architecture as nebulous perception.

Conclusion: Forma del Agua is not only an architectural project — it is an ethical and aesthetic stance on how to inhabit fragile ecosystems, how to learn from natural processes, and how to return to architecture its capacity to move, inspire, and transform. It is an act of respect for water and the landscape, and an invitation to design by listening.

[This Academic Project has been published with text and images submitted by the student]