Beautiful Virgin Islands

Wednesday, Oct 08, 2025

A Woven Facade Ties a Colombian Home to the Lush Landscape and Local Community

A Woven Facade Ties a Colombian Home to the Lush Landscape and Local Community

Zuloark and Santiago Pradilla draw upon traditional craft and prefabricated design to create a hillside residence with strong roots.

Built on a verdant hillside in Nocaima, Colombia, Casa Tejida-or the Woven House-is a 645-square-foot home designed by Santiago Pradilla and Zuloark for Juana Mayorga, Paulo Tourenc, and their daughter, Maya.

"With Paulo and Juana, who have a dream of creating an organic coffee plantation, we decided that less is better, and that we should build a smaller house," Pradilla says. "We thought about how to live with less furniture; how to spend more time on the floor; how we could learn from indigenous tribes and the vernacular architecture in Colombia; and how to rethink the relationship between the inside and the outside."



Located an hour and a half from Bogotá, La Vereda Fiscal is a rural community where approximately 20 families live in homes arranged along an unpaved mountain path. According to the architects, each family contributes different resources to the community and the land, which has a rich biodiversity due to its temperate climate and rugged topography.



Access to the site was difficult, so the architects lived in an adjacent community during the construction process. "We created new relationships with the locals, who shared so much valuable knowledge," Zuloark’s Juan Chacón says. "Casa Tejida involved every person in the decision-making process. Creating a community around the design and construction was, undoubtedly, our greatest achievement for this project."



While en route to the construction site from Bogotá, the architects met a local weaver named Maria, who makes furniture using natural fibers. Taken with her work, they asked her to collaborate with them on ideas for the home’s cladding. With Maria, they discovered a way to create a woven effect for the home’s front facade.



Casa Tejida is, as the architects like to call it, "a semiartisanal project" that was inspired by digital manufacturing and open source systems. "We mixed a precrafted structure with local wisdom and techniques," Chacón says. "The open, adaptable, and replicable design approach we took was understandable by all. It was a learning process for the community and for us."



Community members informed the architects that they should position the home so it would be perpendicular to the topography’s natural contours, instead of parallel. This arrangement proved to be ideal in terms of solar orientation, and it helped to create different ecosystems on each side of the house.



Casa Tejida’s wood structural elements were inspired by pre-Hispanic architecture. "Columns were often buried, while others simply rested atop stones," Pradilla explains. "The idea was that the buried wood pillars would support the house, and years later after they’d rotted, the resting columns would still be in place and able to hold the bearing load."



The design team also looked to prefabricated solutions for the home’s construction. "Colombian wood and metal guilds produced pieces of the construction puzzle to be assembled very quickly on site," Chacón says. "With a small cluster of companies, we explored this innovative way of building in Colombia. This allowed the community to see that houses can be made in respectful ways that adapt to the environment-healthier ways that are more livable after all."


Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
×