Between 2012 and 2013, I spent long hours working on a project in the Bogotá Central Cemetery. This cemetery was built at the end of the 19th century, conceived as a set of three adjacent lots located in the Santa Fe neighborhood, right in the heart of the city. During Enrique Peñalosa’s first term as mayor, which coincided with the turn of this century, one of the lots was repurposed as a park, in the context of a public space regeneration plan. The strategy was to produce ample concrete squares that would cover the entire lot, except for a tree or two and some iconic modern sculptures. It was named Renaissance Park, even though the foundations of a former cemetery lie underneath. It had been, moreover, the kind of cemetery which served as a transition between the informal burials of old and the orderly parceling of modern tombs. Thus, this site sheltered older corpses under the foundations of the demolished mausoleums. [...]
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