One of the most frequented buildings of the Universidad Industrial de Santander day after day is the main porter’s lodge on Carrera 27. However, it has become so commonplace that people do not even notice it any more. However, during the study carried out to determine the parameters of the Special Management and Protection Plan for UIS buildings, this construction obtained the third highest score for its heritage value.
“This porter’s lodge, which was initially only for vehicles, was designed by architects Mario Pilonieta, a graduate of the Universidad Nacional, who designed a dozen UIS buildings, together with Guillermo Escandón Sorzano, a graduate of the Javeriana, also a renowned designer of modern architecture, who were part of the University’s Physical Plant team, with the architect Carlos Virviescas Pinzón”, recalled the architect and restorer Antonio José Díaz Ardila.
“The lines of this construction are the classic lines of modern architecture, with exposed concrete, exposed brick, what we call ‘brutalist’ architecture, whose main representative is Le Corbusier, and which was the trend in architecture for several decades. The module is very simple, in the old days it was exposed brick, the construction part and the eaves in exposed concrete. Probably, because of the deterioration, they decided to strip the whole of the part that encloses the porter’s lodge, and then painted it white; but white was too attractive for graffiti. Now, with the grey, everything looks like concrete and it is easier to control it, explained Díaz Ardila, who is also the director of the Santander Theatre.
In his account, architect Díaz Ardila said: “Initially, this street of the University was the continuation of Carrera 27 and the bus routes went north to La Perla and back; students got off the bus inside the University. Then, in the entrance hall, they put some chains like a car park”.
And he continues: “In the 1970s, because of the demonstrations and problems that the universities had, the government took the decision to lock them up”, and security problems for the campus, the buildings and the people had increased.
There, at the entrance to the university, which was open to pedestrians, was the entrance gate for vehicles; the main platform bordered the basketball courts to the west. Subsequently, the outermost part was recovered for the flag square outside the campus and the other part for the students’ square, which gives access to the University Shop and the buildings of the Faculty of Human Sciences 1 and 2.
The portico that surrounds the entrance to the Universidad Industrial de Santander and which has the logo symbol of the University, some say that it is the abstraction of a slide rule; a very practical invention for doing multiplications, divisions, square roots, logarithms, etc. They were little white rulers, one inside the other, with a transparent cursor that moved and gave you the answer. The new generations don’t even know it, because it began to disappear in the 1970s, when electronic calculators appeared, recalls architect Díaz Ardila.
With the transformation experienced by the University, in the first years of this century, the entrance of vehicles through this entrance was restricted and now its use is exclusively for pedestrians; the vehicular entrances were enabled in the entrances of Carrera 30 and Carrera 25.
The enclosure is a bit invasive, even with those tubes around the small square blocking the entrance. One would like, once again, in the future, when we are a little more civilized, for the universities to break down their barriers again and become integrated into the city as another neighborhood: the students’ neighborhood, the Barrio Estudiantil, the Barrio de la Ciencia,” says Antonio José Díaz, hoping that this gateway will give us access to a new, more humane and friendlier way of life.
