The XVII century Hacienda Perodias in southwestern Colombia and its contested memory. New functions and transformation processes

The present work revolves around the protection and adaption of the Hacienda Perodias, an old farmhouse from the XVII century that is located in southwest Colombia. Besides being part of the nation’s rural built heritage, this building complex is connected also to the processes of evangelization and slave trade carried out at that time in South America. In order to illustrate how profound this embodied memory is translated into today’s social and cultural dynamics, this work is organized into three parts. The first, standing from a broader scale, covers the socio-geographical scenario in which this typology of building, the Casa de Hacienda, emerged and the social meanings that have been attached to it throughout time. Next, entering the scale of the constructed object, the second part focuses on the geographical, historical and architectural dimensions of the farmhouse in addition to the analysis of its current condition. All this is in order to properly understand the scope of the adaptation possibilities that this object that has been abandoned for more than two decades may have, opportunities that are contained in the final part of this work. In a quest to re-signify the collective memory linked to its spaces, the third and final part presents the proposed intervention of the Hacienda as a large eco-park, a refuge for wildlife and low-impact human activities, which lies at its heart the architectural complex of Perodias, now revitalised as a community centre. By giving a new life to this site, the project would seek to protect both a built heritage represented in its architecture and the cultural values shared by the surrounding communities, whose history can also be found linked to the hacienda. As a new centre for the transmission of ancestral knowledge and cultural expressions that in turn aims to enhance the capacities and opportunities of its inhabitants, the Perodias hacienda would finally be reborn.