Heritage preservation in the old sector of the Municipality of Barichara

IDOM is a company of Spanish origin that provides professional Consulting, Engineering and Architecture services in more than 125 countries. It has been in the market for 65 years, and has participated in numerous important projects around the world through a portfolio of international partners that provide local support and professional services.

The IDOM Colombia team contacted Echeverrimontes to organize a joint consultancy for a bidding process promoted by the Colombian Ministry of Culture. The project, called Update of the Special Management and Protection Plan (PEMP) of the old sector of the Municipality of Barichara, required a professional specialist in heritage preservation who had specific experience in the subject.

Given that the main object of the consultancy was Urban Planning for a municipality declared an asset of Cultural Interest in Colombia, work was done to address the problem from a comprehensive perspective where the real problem was addressed by involving the different actors in favor of the consolidation of the municipality in its development process. In that sense, it was very important for IDOM to achieve a comprehensive team with a transversal view to be able to provide a response that added value to the municipality.

The challenges of the consulting process

The main objective of the work was to update the Special Management and Protection Plan formulated in 2015. In particular, it was necessary to:

• Update the cadastral base of both Barichara and the Guane Population Center, taking into account that the current plans are made with a 2005 cadastral base; That is to say, when the MEWP was adopted there was already a 10-year gap and this has generated difficulties for the effective application of the standards.
• Develop the unification, clarification, definition and compilation of a specific chapter for the Guane population center as an area of ​​influence of the Guane road.
• Reevaluate programs and projects so that they respond to the technical, financial and administrative reality of the municipality. Furthermore, they had to be supported by guidelines established from the aspects of technical physical management, so that the projects did not appear as simple mentions or files, but rather had a normative base and clear guidelines on which to base resource management.
• Finally, it was considered essential to maintain the existing living knowledge in Barichara, which is why any heritage management regulations had to be aligned with the preservation of traditional techniques and materials, which under their protection would in turn guarantee the maintenance of the historic urban landscape of the Historical Center.

The previous points, derived from the 2015 PEMP, had not been implemented due to difficulties in the territory, its impacts and the difficulties of the municipality in terms of management and implementation. The consultancy was in charge of analyzing the needs and problems, according to the previous four lines in the current PEMP, and also proposed specific solutions for the municipality to carry out.

It is important to clarify that this process had as its starting point the analysis information carried out by the Directorate of Heritage and Memory through the Urban Real Estate Cultural Heritage Group in conjunction with the municipal administration of Barichara and the Local Heritage Board, and the documentation support of Resolution 0688 of 2015 (PEMP 2015). Furthermore, it is important to keep in mind that the PEMP is framed in the National Plan for the Recovery of Historic Centers, whose objectives are:

• Support government actors in policy implementation.
• Support the achievement and optimization of financial resources and attraction of investment.
• Support urban adaptation and conservation.

Work organization and solutions

The consultancy was divided into three phases: a preliminary stage of analysis of the initial information and the formulation of the community outreach strategy; a diagnostic stage to establish the current state of the area under study; and a final formulation stage where the comprehensive proposal that accompanies and supports the PEMP update was proposed.

Once the territory under study was fully recognized, and with a historical look at the origin, development and transformation of the Historic Center of Barichara and the Camino de Guane, the temporal vision in past, present and future was proposed, which allows synthesizing and focusing both the analysis of the starting conditions and the approach to the comprehensive intervention of the territory.

Barichara is a Historical Center with a high environmental quality and the landscape of its surroundings, which maintains its urban and architectural values ​​⏤for which it was declared a National Monument⏤ and which offers its inhabitants, users and visitors, the best conditions for enjoyment of cultural tourism.

The Camino de Guane, for its part, is a pre-Hispanic historical path that constitutes a highly valuable legacy as a living testimony of the communications network that served the country in its development from the origin of civilizations, through the conquest, colonization and urbanization, until it becomes a historical, environmental and cultural setting that allows the connection with the past, but above all the enjoyment of ecological tourism.

It was very important to recognize and raise from the beginning the heritage complex made up of the three pieces ⏤the Barichara Historical Center, the Guane Historical Center and the Guane road⏤. At the same time, this vision also made it possible to give relevance to the community in general and to introduce a current comprehensive view that adds value to the process of socioeconomic development, differentiating itself from the traditional vision that the conservation of Historic Centers finds from an eminently heritage perspective.

As a basis for the assessment and strategies for the preservation of these spaces, the assessment process developed in the original PEMP 2015 document was taken as a reference, which bases the assessment on the concepts of territory, community and memory, within the framework of three fundamental aspects:

• The territorial context in which both the Historic Center of Barichara, the population center of Guane and the Camino de Guane are inscribed.
• The historical context in which the evolution of said set occurred. 
• The socio-cultural context that accompanied the evolution of these assets of cultural interest.

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