SOFÍA MARÍN

    Bogotá is a city in constant growth, as a living being it is in continuous transformation and therefore it’s increasingly necessary to think of it as a great whole, composed of different urban projects, which, orchestrated and in tune, achieve a more manageable city for everybody.

   Until today, the projects that have been carried out have not managed to make the city feel like a single object, although Transmilenio revolutionized the way in which different areas were connected, the infrastructure projects have not been carried out in the integral way that was planned at the foundation of the system.

   This lack of continuity has a direct effect on the type of quality that the system can offer, the stations are very small, the frequency in which the buses pass through the station is very low and therefore users must submit to endless waits. This results in an uncomfortable environment that is alien both to their context and to the people who use them on a daily basis, this discomfort ends up fostering a culture of individualism where people step over the other without even questioning whether they are causing any harm.

   This is how something that was designed to unite and connect the city ends up being a problem in itself. The detachment that these stations create makes people feel that the duty to take care of them belongs to someone else altogether. People do not feel that the station is part of the public space, of everyone's space.

   The project "The Station, an Extension for Public Space" seeks to rethink the model on which the stations are based. It’s expected to create spaces where the user feels comfortable, where there is the possibility for sitting down, enjoying a good coffee, even paying for services while waiting for transport. In short, that it ceases to represent a place of boredom, bad times and obligatory passage, and becomes an environment in which people can feel ownership more than being mere users.