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Colombian architect Rogelio Salmona has translated pragmatic and poetic concepts and intentions into physical form. These result from the architect’s deep communion with and understanding of the materials and processes, as well as of the historic-cultural context in which his architectural intervention takes place.

Traditional materials such as brick and stone, or unexpected materials such as water and wind are combined to interact with and heighten in a wonderful manner, the surroundings; the immediate, defined by the architecture, as well as the distant, consisting of the landscape. Salmona has managed to recreate, through this rigorous architectonic practice, a world of buildings and architectural complexes of great presence and robustness that speak of a particular reality always related to the sense of the place.

Salmona’s oeuvre, including such notable examples as the Torres del Parque (1967) in Bogotá, the Presidential House for Illustrious Guests (1981) in Cartagena, the Quimbaya Museum (1983) in Armenia and the National Archive of the Nation (1992) in Bogotá, is without doubt one of the most prolific and significant of those produced on this continent during the second half of this century. This book, a tribute to, rather than an exhaustive study of the architect’s work, consists of a personal and selective interpretation at the iconographic and textual level, in particular of the work which post-dated the Torres del Parque.

Colombian architect Rogelio Salmona’s buildings have become urban monuments and reference points for a whole generation of architects. Offering photos of a full range of his works, this account of Salmona’s ideas explains his considerations of public use and cultural expressiveness.

Ricardo Castro received the degree of Arquitecto from the Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá. He obtained an M.A. in Art History and an M.Arch. at the University of Oregon. He has taught at the Universidad de LosAndes, Bogotá, University of Oregon, Kansas State University, and L’université Laval. He is currently an Associate Professor of Architecture at McGill University in Montreal, where he has taught since 1982.

His professional activities take place on various fronts: he teaches architectural design, history and criticism at McGill; he contributes architectural criticism and photographs to architectural publications all over the world, among them A+U, the Gazette, ARQ, the CanadianArchitect, Design Book Review, Zodiac, Periferia, Proa, and Projeto. He has participated in numerous photographic exhibitions in Canada and the United States, and several of his photographs form part of private and public collections in North America, including the Norman Photographic Archives of the McCord Museum in Montreal. Castro has also been a contributing writer for three collections of architectural essays: Grassroots, Greystones and Glass Towers, (1989), Critical Regionalism, ed. Spiro Amourgis, (1991); and A Celebration of Canada’s Arts, 1930-1970, Edited by Glen Caruthers and Gordana Lazarevich (1996).

In 1990, Castro was awarded the Prix Paul-Henri Lapointe in the category “History, Criticism and Theory” by the Ordre des architectes du Québec. He has received Canada Council grants for the study of water in architecture and for research on the work of Colombian architect Rogelio Salmona. In December 1995, he was awarded a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts to continue his study of Salmona’s domestic architecture. A selection of photographs and texts produced during the past nine years constitute the basic material for this book.