Summary

The urban landscape of Bogotá, understood from its cultural condition, is the main topic of this research. The characterization and analytical perspective of this thesis is the image of the city that comes as a consequence of its dominant cleavages. 

The study tackles the evolutionary process of a Bogotá high street known as Carrera Séptima – between the Plaza de Bolivar and the Plazuela de las Nieves - thus recognizing the models and ideologies that guided the construction process of the city. The period contemplated in the study goes from its foundation to the 60’s of the 20th century. Such a time frame makes possible to discuss the mutually defining identities of the city and the majority of its citizens.

This research assumes, as a starting point, that Bogota’s image is a resultant of ideologies imposed by powerful cleavages of each period, which, in turn, produced an image that was hardly owned by the majority of its citizens.

This condition was particularly critical during the 20th century. In that time the city drastically sprawled and economic corporate power was more visible. The transformations were due to increased capacity to intervene strategic places of the city - because of their visibility and rent over land - and because the images is in itself desirable to consume. 

Bearing that in mind, the research shows the relevance of the image construction process of the city as a fundamental phenomenon that should be taken into account in relation to the identities configuration for the majority of Bogota’s city dwellers and not as a marginal fact that has become heritage of a few.

As part the idea that the city image underpins the reading and construction of its urban landscape, this thesis takes as part of its method the inclusion of a big number of urban image from a wide range of sources: pictures, paintings, conceptual drawings, descriptive drawings, among other things. In addition, these images complement and expand the written argument. 

The thesis theoretical framework delves into authors whose approaches from architecture, geography and philosophy address the formalization of the collective space.  Consequently, they belong to the urban perceptual approach and its implication in historical and societal terms. In that way, the works of Kevin Lynch, Alain Roger and of phenomenological geographers like Baylle S. Antoine have been essential.

Besides the first chapter, in which formulates the frame of reference of this research –justification, objectives, methodology and approach-, the thesis consists of three chapters that deal with the social and cultural conditions that determined the urban landscape of the studied area. These chapters address three specific moments: the first one refers to the material background of the research setting –Sabana de Bogotá– and to the overlap of the foundational model brought by the Spanish Crown throughout the four centuries of the colonial period.The following chapter concentrates in the transformations occured in Bogotá’s urban landscape during a period known as Republican, which reached its climax in the 1920s. Finally, chapter 4 approach  the urban landscape formally linked to international architecture – mainly that of the modernist movements and the American city.

The thesis has a final chapter which includes: the epilogue, as a brief count of what happened after the 70s; and the conclusions, which are not only stated as an analysis of what happened but also as a propositional argument.