Cartagena, Colombia | c. 2018
Photo by Nicholas Huggins
Opened in May 2018, the Caribbean Campus of La Universidad de los Andes is an adjunct to the university’s seventy-year-old Bogotá campus and was inspired by Cartagena’s Old City—founded by the Spanish in 1533.
The Moorish-style buildings in the Old City feature central courtyards shaded by banyan trees and pools with fountains to help naturally reduce temperatures in the surrounding residences. For the university campus, architect Brandon Haw created twin buildings overhung with concrete fins to help protect classrooms from the Caribbean sun and central pools of water to promote a natural cooling effect.
The campus also features an innovation not available to the Spanish colonialists of 1533: air-conditioning.