Heritage Memory — Ibagué.

Ibagué, Tolima, Colombia — 2025 — Research Assistantship, Universidad de Ibagué

The project began with a problem that the research group Rastro Urbano had been sitting with for some time: the gap between technical heritage documentation and its public reach. Ibagué holds three buildings of significant architectural and cultural value — Sala Alberto Castilla, Museo Panóptico de Ibagué, and Institución Educativa San Jorge — all facing physical deterioration and a lack of precise, accessible records. The research project Memoria Patrimonial de Ibagué, led by principal investigator Juan Felipe Solís, set out to document them digitally through 3D scanning, photogrammetry, and BIM modelling. The specific problem assigned to the assistantship was the one that typically goes unsolved: how does that technical knowledge reach the people who need it? The answer was editorial. The assistantship’s mandate was to design and produce two books — one for Sala Alberto Castilla, one for the Museo Panóptico — translating the results of architectural survey, historical analysis, and spatial interpretation into rigorous, visually coherent publications accessible to academic and general audiences alike. The work unfolded across five phases: information gathering and classification, editorial structure and grid design, full layout in Adobe InDesign, technical and conceptual review alongside the research team, and final delivery. Each phase required a different literacy — archival, visual, typographic, spatial — and the process demanded a much deeper engagement with editorial design than architectural training typically provides. As a direct extension of this work, Professor Solís invited the team to participate in an International Summer Course on 3D Digital Tools for Heritage Documentation, led by Mario Santana Quintero, an internationally recognised researcher in digital heritage conservation. The course deepened the technical grounding in photogrammetric survey and 3D scanning that underpins the entire project. Both books remain in process. The Sala Alberto Castilla volume has entered editorial review; the Museo Panóptico volume is in its final production stages. Publication is anticipated by the end of 2026 or early 2027. The work is not finished — which is, in its own way, the most honest thing that can be said about heritage: the record is never complete, only more or less precise than it was before.

Research assistantship, Universidad de Ibagué. Rastro Urbano research group; principal investigator Juan Felipe Solís.