PORTFOLIO UCL

Architecture_ Territory_ Art_

_Jhoan Antonio Cortés_ Portfolio

Portfolio

Within this portfolio there is a selection of projects developed both in the academic field and in the labor and personal field. These are a sample of my vision regarding architecture, landscape, territory and art. With them I also seek to show my personal explorations and interests in the aforementioned fields.

scales materialities tectonics photos and drawings

Work index - 01 The luck of the flowers - 02 Latent friction - 03 PC__Print(“HelloWorld”)

I find myself

- 05 Harvesting Knoledge

This portfolio is finally

- 06 A Possible Territory: The Magdalena River Basin

Contents

a sample of who I am.

- Photography

_Jhoan Antonio Cortés_

Between different

The luck of the flowers

_Jhoan Antonio Cortés_

01 Portfolio

Our history has been marked by water, in the same way that we have affected it. The life of Bogotá and of ourselves is in the rivers, wetlands and paramos. We are people of these places, of the landscape. The city uses this resource, its subsistence is allowed thanks to it. Our vision of water is linked to thinking of it as a barrier to be overcome, and not as a privilege. It is time to coexist, to build a new landscape.

Architecture, Landscape, urban design, masterplan, art Graduation Project Location: Bogotá, Colombia Mentors: Lorenzo Castro Carolina Concha

The luck of the flowers

Use: Water reservoir, park, urban trigger

Privileged are those flowers that are born next to the water and that thanks to this are aware of their beauty. The territory is surrounded, traversed and shaped by this element. We settle next to it, we need it, it is essential for our survival. We have trapped it, dried it, contaminated it, we have changed its course and we have also buried it and with it ourselves. The starting point of the project is the search to make it visible.

The concern to give it the value it deserves, is the moment, the time of the water.

A block is intervened and just as it happened with this one, the model gradually begins to be replicated throughout the city, water is rediscovered, it then becomes part of our identity. New centers, foci of life. The cycles are regulated again, this resource once again has a leading role.

The city of Bogotá is restructured with Gardens, reservoirs. With places of coexistence. The project as an urban trigger, as a place of transformation of the environment. The new water infrastructure.

A new way of thinking about the city. It is time to live the luck of the flowers that are born next to the water.

Context maps

Fifth Colombian biennial of architecture students.

Project selected as finalist in the category Urban design, rural and land planning.

XXII architecture students annual. (Colombian society of architects, Bogotá) Project selected by the faculty of architecture and design for representing the university in the category of Final Degree Project Bronze medal winner

Conceptual representations of the dioramas

Video Water systems of Bogotá city

Garden floor plan, first development.

1. The architectural pieces that compose the garden.

3D printed Left to right: -The funnel -The gargoyles -The water yard -Meander -The center -The strokes -Shakei 2. Garden floor plan, expansion.

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Section and view of the water yard

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-Section of the change of meterials.

-Axonometric view of thw project.

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Between the floors, drainpipes and gargoyles Different details make up the project, some of them are shaped by water, by its movement and its cycle.

Permeability and materiality become vital elements in the construction of the garden. We find curbs that allow small puddles, momentary reflections, visual games. Water, directly or indirectly, is the protagonist.

The materiality of the floor is born as a gesture to the memory of what happens below, This change is made from where the stream is buried to its mouth. A sewer is created that runs through the territory, showing the existence of something that is not present with the naked eye. It carries rainwater from the mountain towards the rest of the city.

In this page: View of “the center”, the main piece of the garden.

In the next page: View of “the gargoyles”

“Bronze medal for efficient resolution and distinguished aesthetic, functional and spatial empathy. Classified as a type of project research with an environmental focus and a line of research in urban and landscape design in which rigor in the process and coherence in the solution of the urban and architectural proposal were identified as a result of learning. In the qualitative assessment, it was recognized that the degree thesis is an innovative project with high social sensitivity that considers the potentials of the territory and recovers them with a view to existing sustainability. It is inclusive since it considers open access to public space.” Colombian Society of Architecs

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Sections of one of the points of meeting

Axonometric views of the urban vision speculation.

Gardens appear all around the city, regulating the natural cycles.

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Latent friction

_Jhoan Antonio Cortés_

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Portfolio

The border can move, fade or change. Despite this, the garden marks the place where today the limit between the paramo and cultivation is found.

This project will give an account of how the management of the land will be given. This garden would be able to show history and the change in the landscape, if this border continues to advance towards the paramo ecosystem, and will allow us to question our relationship with the natural environment. How it is manipulated for purposes of self-interest, leaving aside the free development of life. It will then become a monument to the encounter between these two worlds, seen at a specific moment.

Landscape, architecture, art, rural Academic project Project topyc: Contemporary gardens Location: Paramo de Sumapaz, Colombia Mentors: Luisa Brando Laserna Pedro Aparicio Llorente Diego rivero Borrell Diego Bermudez Use: Water reservoir, park, monument, sculpture

Latent friction

Group of two Jhoan Antonio Cortés (team leader) Camilo Tapias

The garden project arises from the union of two plants, the potato plant and the frailejón. The first is one of the bases of food, it is in great demand and constitutes a large part of the country’s agricultural production. It grows in very diverse places and easily adapts to its environment, which has led it to massively cultivate and radically transform the environment it reaches, largely playing with the concept of limit. The second is endemic to the moors, and even to each specific moorland. It only grows in very special conditions of humidity and height. It is a key agent in the water cycle, as it can capture and accumulate it. They are small ecosystems concentrated in a plant that, over time, create tiny rivers that come down from the top of the mountain and allow the cycle to continue.

The relationship between these two plants took us to the paramo of Sumapaz, the largest in the world, which provides water to approximately 15 million people. There is a peasant tradition that has cultivated land near the paramo, increasingly expanding the agricultural frontier towards places that are thought to be untouchable, putting at risk the production of a vital resource for our subsistence. Friction is generated between these two landscapes and a limit is created between what is considered “natural” and what is cultivated. A limit that is crossed by water, which is responsible for sewing and uniting the territory.

This element produced at the top of the mountain, comes down, feeds the fields and allows their development.

Final presentation video Right: Living cartography of the territory

The garden project is implanted right on the border between the paramo, the cultivation and the high Andean forest. This has one hectare, which is distributed in an elongated way, joining two points where the cultivation area is advancing towards the paramo. The garden is designed as a route which comes into contact with the three existing ecosystems. Its shape widens in three moments, this happens when the paramo and the crop come together and there is no barrier that separates them. The purpose of this is not to allow the increase of the agricultural frontier, to increase the visibility of the importance of the paramo, to be a point of reference for the beginning of this ecosystem and to serve as an element of denunciation.

Between balloons that announce the arrival to the paramo, a path, stones, mirrors, moss and a reservoir tower, the garden finds its consolidation.

Sections and floor plan of the tower, mediums chrcoal and color pencils

1. Video art, first concepts, installations and materil experimentation.

2. Video, model experimentation, terrarium

In this page: Final presentation video

Photos of the tower 1:10 concrete model, and material experimentation Expected interior atmospher, drawings in charcoal on white paper

Final images of the garden

Portfolio

Speculation processes of computational design as well as a criticalconceptual framework through information processed and determined parameters. The project investigates the ways in which meaning, intentions and knowledge are built by solving and materializing complexities. Multiple prototypes and distinctive non-conventional objects are generated, creating a new aesthetic and methods of understanding, exploring and creating procedures to generate the development of computational techniques, tools and theories, combined with methods of visualization, representation, parametric and algorithmic design. In other words, the construction of a graphic discourse as a computational argument.

Art, computacional thinking, landscape

Mentors: Daniela Atencio Use: Speculative processes, image production Group of two, Jhoan Cortés, Juanita Echeverry

PC__print (“HelloWorld”)

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THE IDEA OF THE FLAT IMAGE AS A SOURCE OF THREE-DIMENSIONAL DATA The aesthetic and readable notions of an image are challenged in representation, design and visualization, developing an abstraction to speculate on the generation of retracted, distinct and attractive images [through both algorithmic programming processes and post computational techniques]. The possibilities of migrating information from image to geometry will provoke mechanisms to activate a speculative realism in the products to be obtained: instead of simply replicating or re-sampling what is known, the project will impose a more profound and strange result and new relationships between ideas or exploration of the new limits of design challenging the traditional notions of form finding and representation.

_Jhoan Antonio Cortés_

University Project PC__print(“HelloWorld”)__ Computational Design-Thinking

Based on the use of nature pattern images, a spherical surface was made more complex using centroids to generate 300,000 spheres, thus developing an organic geometry. Speaking about the object’s material we found iridescent black chrome and, for the generation of a subtle contrast, gold was used on randomly chosen spheres. The object ends up being a figure with a high degree of spatial plasticity where the geometry’s complexity and the material’s contrast are the main characters. The work then becomes a sculpture with a high aesthetic value. The setting in which it is located is a forest that has been burned in such a way that the smoky and foggy atmosphere makes the object blend into space and become part of the landscape.

Departing from the modeling of volumes using Python and Grasshopper, a complex texturing and effect was applied to a geometry that was then duplicated to generate symmetry. A pearlized material is added to give it an organic feel, more specifically alluding to marine life. The object is implanted in the stage in such a way that it appears as if it was part of the mountainous landscape. The atmospheric features show the sun rising in the morning, so that both the object and the stage are illuminated by a subtle yellow light. The object’s material allows it to be part of the landscape and its scale is defined from what would be an habitable space.

Procedure diagram, virtual sculpture and implementation on an scenario

Harvesting Knowledge

_Jhoan Antonio Cortés_

04 Portfolio

In the region of Ziguinchor lies an opportunity for creating an integrated network that fosters the ground for students to learn with tranquility through access to food, water, and health. A building process that supports local economies and fosters ecological balance.

As a Senegalese village, where multiple programs operate in a collective space through individual and collective patios, the project understands architecture as a process, rather than a closed space or a defined geometry. As a living system, the school roots in the past (skills and knowledge), strengthens the present (soil regeneration, water recollection & treatment, food production, plantation of future building materials), and secures a sovereign future for children, community, and habitat alike.

(3) EARTH BUILDING The walls are built with the school´s and its sorrounding soil.

LIVING LAB 2 Laboratory near medicine lab, kitchen and forestry.

SPORT COURTYARD Laboratory near medicine lab, kitchen and forestry.

FOREST GARDENS Each tree specie plays a specific role, growing along a variety of fruits and vegetables. This can encourage other Forests Farming to happen outside the school, which can increase the communities income by 400% (revisar fuente), helping farmers to addapt to climate change.

THATCHED ROOF

(4) PROGRESIVE ARCHITECTURE Both the modules and the school are designed to grow in time.

(1) HEALTH AND WATER Recolecting rain water, and creating the first ritual as washing the hands.

BAMBOO ceiling

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Architecture, landscape, technical studies Contest Kaira Looro, Primary school Team Jhoan Antonio Cortés (team leader) Daniela Chacon Luisa Brando

Harvesting Knowledge

Use: Primary school, community system.

The school is understood as a place for learning and strengthening a larger community and habitat.

To learn, there is a need to strengthen health and nourishment systems for the children, as well as for their community. There is an opportunity in creating a school, understanding it as the place where the future is planted, to integrate the elderly and the families as part of the learning system, where they can share their knowledge as well as strengthen their economies by working in the crops, forests, and the building of the school. Following the shape of a traditional village in Senegal, the school is designed, not as a close and defined geometry, but as an open system made of many small architectures that surround a central space.

Different from a village where the central patio has a big tree, the school places water as the central element.

Expanding on the idea of the impluvium the built structures are carefully located facing a patio that either collects the rainwater for plants to grow or re-directs the water towards other gardens or storage tanks. On a smaller scale, small sculpture-like water fountains are spread across the school. These collect rainwater while also purifying it with filters and thus allowing kids and the community to drink. The project is structured around water and its centrality on the health of the children and the future regeneration of the soil and seeding ground.

Architecture is understood as a process integrated with the community and the landscape. It is a modular construction system based on local materials that are planted and found on-site. The use and distribution of the materials seek thermal comfort, structural stability, cross ventilation, and protection against humidity, floods, and sun. But furthermost the architecture seeks to include the community in the building process while straightening the habitat.

COTTON 4

Truss every 1.2m

BAMBOO Truss every 1.2m

BAMBOO

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(2) COTTON AND WEAVING To grow the bulding materials such as cotton, indigo, bamboo and straw from the schools ground allows for awareness, learning math, science, agronomy, and other subjects through the observation of nature.

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RAMMED EARTH (5) BAMBOO FOREST Trees help the soil to retain moisture, so even watermelons can grow. Larger trees form a protective barrier against harsh weather and wild animals.

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Traditional village and proposal

BROKEN TILES

AMPHITHEATER Laboratory near medicine lab, kitchen and forestry.

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(7) MEDICINAL GARDEN Regaining knowledge of plants and medicine sorround the nursery.

with: 60cm height: 230cm

FOUNDATION

(6) LIVING LAB Laboratory near medicine lab, kitchen and forestry.

Pieces of the proposed module

Concrete

Bamboo joint

_Jhoan Antonio Cortés_

A Possible Territory: The Magdalena River Basin

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In this page: Transport, Communications, and Infrastructure

Portfolio

“A Possible Territory: The Magdalena River Basin,” an exhibition by the Cultural Submanagement and the Library Network of the Banco de la República, seeks to prompt reflection on questions regarding how we have lived, how we currently live, and how we aspire to live in the future in the Magdalena River and its basin. These questions are of utmost relevance to eight out of every ten Colombians, as this is the proportion of those who inhabit the basin.”

“An exhibition to learn about and reflect on the most important hydrographic basin in Colombia.”

Illustration, conceptualization, exhibit, art, children Museum exhibition Location: Bogotá, Colombia Luisa Brando Studio Luisa Brando Laserna Lisa Anzallini Jhoan Antonio Cortés ( Support in the conceptualization and development of the illustrations and images of the exhibition.)

A Possible Territory: The Magdalena River Basin

Museo del Banco de la República

The immense natural riches of the Magdalena basin have brought with them the development of the country, but they have also made it the scene of great conflicts and dilemmas. One of them is the tension between economic exploitation and environmental sustainability.

The exhibition El Magdalena: a possible basin emphasizes the transformation that these events have entailed on the ecosystems of the basin, drawing attention to the impact that the use and exploitation of its riches has had for centuries, and especially in recent years. decades.

In eleven sections, the exhibition presents an overview of the Magdalena basin as a complex and at the same time delicate system, which is influenced by our actions, even the most everyday ones, such as the use we make of water, air and land.

An important part of the sections is dedicated to presenting the physical aspects of the basin, from its geological history to the current complexity of its ecosystems. The remaining sections focus on the human geography of the basin, starting from its settlement over the centuries, the way in which we have exploited its resources, the communications networks that are concentrated in this territory and the institutional and social defenses that are established. they have erected to face their conflicts.

The last part of the exhibition, on the future of the Magdalena River, presents the visitor with the importance of cultural changes. The Magdalena basin faces formidable challenges in the short and medium term, and without a doubt the key to solving them lies, first and foremost, in culture. Behaviors such as those related to the use of water and energy, waste disposal, deforestation, mining exploitation, fishing, agricultural and livestock activities, have cultural foundations that can be identified and, more importantly, transformed when their effects social, economic or environmental are not desirable or are not sustainable.

Chart of fish species in the river and lifecycle in relation with human developement

River illustration of causes of sedimentation

Geographical Section: Andes Mountain Range Biodiversity

In this page: Final exhibition, composed by 11 panels.

Portfolio

Photography is a thin slice of space as well as time. We turn the experience into an image into a memory. To take photographs is to participate in the mutability, vulnerability and mortality of things and beings and spaces.

_Jhoan Antonio Cortés_

My perspective about photography

Each of the images produced in the worls is intrinsically linked to the person who produces it. In the photograph we can find the vision of the person who takes it, the value that he gives to what he is seeing, to what deserves to be seen. The photo itself becomes an act of possession, in a certain way it takes possession of what is captured, be it the subject or the space. In this way, photography is not only “the mere result of the encounter between an event and a photographer” but is itself the event itself.

The photographer with the camera has the ability to change or not the perception of the event.

The photographer with his gaze and his photo manages to change the perception of things, allows us to see what we did not see before or did not want to see, he has the ability to show something that I would call the sublime moment, with which he leads us to feel affected by the photograph we are seeing.

Images surround us, they are everywhere, they even saturate us. But there are times when some of them move us, take us to emotional states of great value.

Photographs allow us to see what we did not see before, they lead us to give value to what did not have value before. They allow us to build different imaginaries around what we live and see. The photographer has that role, to capture the moment, to change our gaze, to lead us to find the sublime.

Photography to a certain extent helps us transform experience into a way of seeing. I also keep this sentence of Susan Sontag “Today everything exists to culminate in a photograph”

The forest Analog photography, serie of three.

Photographic paper 25.4x20.4 cm 2022

Top images Memories of a human being, inhabiting a small cell Analog photography Photographic paper 25.4x20.4 cm A serie of 6 photos

In a certain way, movement in photography captures an instant, a feeling, the poetics of the inhabited space. Analog photography is used as a means of capture to give strength to the image. Shutter time is increased to capture movement.

In orden from left to right: _The image, the poetics of space_ 1. Paris 1. Paris 2. Berlin 3. Barcelona 4. Paris 2