NODO.
Ibagué, Tolima, Colombia — 2026 — Honorable Mention, Espacio Creativo
The project began with a competition brief encountered on TikTok — a detail worth stating, because it reflects how architectural problems circulate today. Espacio Creativo called for a modular habitable unit of no more than 15m² for a single university student, resolving at minimum a rest area, a study area, and a services zone. The constraint was tight by design: small enough to force a fundamental rethinking of how space is made, not just arranged. The response came immediately from the Adaptive Solar Screen developed in 2025. That project had demonstrated that a dry-assembly system — panels cut by CNC, joined without adhesives or specialised tools — could produce precise, stable, and reconfigurable architecture. The question NODO asked was whether that same principle could scale: from a single joinery node to a room, from a room to a module, from a module to a community. The system that emerged is built around a family of MDF components — connectors, structural panels, apertures, and roof elements — that can be assembled and disassembled by the inhabitants themselves, without construction expertise. A single module contains everything a student needs. Two modules begin to negotiate shared space. Multiple modules aggregate into courtyards, terraces, and common areas whose configuration is determined by residents, not by a fixed plan. The project received an honorable mention in the competition. What followed gave it an unexpected second life: on August 10, a 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck Colombia. In the aftermath, the creators of Espacio Creativo were featured in the newspaper La Patria, and NODO was cited as a proposal with genuine potential as an emergency habitable module for displaced communities. A project designed for a student with 15m² had revealed a structural argument that extended far beyond its original brief — a system not defined by a single form of inhabiting, but by a rule for collective growth that adapts to whoever needs it most.
Juan Andrés Gutiérrez Parra and Mariana Guzmán Angarita, Universidad de Ibagué. Honorable mention, Espacio Creativo.
From a joint to a room.
From a module to a community.
Architecture that breathes.
A closer look.
A closer look at the spaces, material relationships and experiences of the project.
