In Bogotá, a third of all households live in gated communities. This phenomenon is a misguided application of the model idealized by post-war American suburbs, which projected an idyllic, safe, happy, and perfect life—a life where mobility prioritizes motorized vehicles, utilizing simple, replicable, and, of course, highly profitable construction models.
Ciudad Isla is an exhibition by architects and professors at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Ramón Bermúdez and Sebastián Serna, in collaboration with the Institute of Science, Technology and Policy (ISTP) at ETH Zurich, which brings this issue to light. It presents a collective research project on gated housing complexes and their relationship with public space in the city of Bogotá.
