Contract - March 2015 - 62

El Guadual Early Childhood
Development Center
Architects Daniel Feldman
and Ivan Dario Quiñones
Client Colombian Family
Welfare Institute
Where Villa Rica, Colombia
What 16,145 total square
feet on two floors
Cost/sf $93
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Classrooms (below) are
connected by a series of
interior tunnels as a fun
child-centric means of
discovery for kids to go
from room to room. Outside,
the bamboo-covered loggia
(opposite) filters sun over
the walkway and helps
keep direct sun off the
concrete structure.

62

B
 

ordering the dense streets and sprawling
sugarcane fields of Villa Rica, a town in
Colombia's war-torn Cauca region, sits
El Guadual Early Childhood Development
Center. Intended to foster the development of young
children, El Guadual has become a community hub for
Villa Rica and a model for child development centers
throughout the country. In turn, its young architects,
Daniel Feldman and Ivan Dario Quiñones, are
demonstrating how designers can promote positive
social change through public interest design.
Feldman, a Colombia native, completed an
Architecture For Humanity (AfH) fellowship in 2010
in Brazil, where he designed the Homeless World Cup
Legacy Center, a prototype facility that harnesses
soccer to empower the underprivileged. When Feldman
returned to Colombia, his friend Quiñones, who is also
an architect, introduced Feldman to the nation's First
Lady, María Clemencia Rodríguez Múnera. She leads
the Instituto Colombiano de Bienestar Familiar (ICBF),
which is the Colombian Institute for Family Welfare.
Quiñones is an architect for ICBF, which is creating a
pilot program for early childhood development centers
for the country's youth. Quiñones arranged for Feldman
to meet the First Lady because Feldman's AfH
experience would fit well with ICBF's mission under her
direction. Feldman joined the cause, taking the position
of lead design architect and advisor for ICBF. Villa Rica's
mayor offered a site for the initial childhood center, and
the process to build El Guadual began.
For the next three years, Feldman and Quiñones
worked as designers and community liaisons, holding

workshops with representatives of the multiple groups
the new center would serve-children from birth to age
five, teens, mothers, and the city as a whole. In a city
of 16,000 with high unemployment and few
opportunities, a former makeshift soccer field is now
home to El Guadual Early Childhood Development
Center. Staffed by 30 local women trained in early
childhood education, the 16,145-square-foot complex
serves 300 children, offers resources for pregnant
women, and acts as a community cultural space.
"Ultimately, our clients are the kids, Feldman says.
"We wanted to create a space where they feel safe yet
challenged, a space that gives them tools to educate
themselves and fosters the idea of the individual through
decision making."
A prototype in process and outcome
Four distinct blocks compose El Guadual's entrance and
communal areas, which include a first-aid station, dining
hall, and two multipurpose rooms, one of which opens as
a stage for the adjacent public plaza.
An outdoor cinema and a catwalk-requested by
teens for hairstyle competitions-further activate the
facade. Behind this semi-public zone, ten classrooms
define an inner courtyard that encompasses a
playground, vegetable garden, and deep overhangs for
shade. A manmade stream winds through the courtyard,
unifying the space while answering the community's call
for a water feature. The center's design honors the built
environment as a crucial part of childhood development,
fostering exploration, choice, and decision-making
abilities. This attitude is especially evident in the

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