Documentation for the integral conservation of the built heritage in the cultural ecosystem of Santa Cruz de Mompox (Bolívar, Colombia)

The municipality of Santa Cruz de Mompox (Department of Bolívar, Colombia) whose historic district was declared Site of National Cultural Interest (1959) and UNESCO World Heritage Site (1995), gives its name to the region known as ‘Momposina Depression’. It is in this spatial-temporal context that this abstract presents a reflection on how an innovative documentation process through recognition of the current state of conservation of heritage sites, supporting historical and documentary research, heritage assessment based on urban-architectural, environmental, aesthetic, technological and management criteria, and the subsequent elaboration of intervention proposals, contribute to the integral conservation of the built heritage in the cultural ecosystem of Santa Cruz de Mompox.
This work is developed based on the academic and professional interest of professor and architect attached to the Architecture department of Pontificia Universidad Javeriana of Bogotá, Colombia, Andrés Gaviria-Valenzuela and that of his group of fourteen undergraduate students of the Architecture program, who regularly each semester, enrolls in the Heritage Studio course.
The aforementioned systemic documentation process was developed with a comprehensive approach in terms of environmental sustainability and cultural heritage, involving, among others, the analytical variables of historical time, built space, cultural landscape and communities. It mainly aims to contribute to the latter with the processes of recognition, assessment and management, both of places or sites already identified, and of possible new built heritage resources that, located in the above-mentioned ecosystem, can sustain the chronicles of a cultural tradition as diverse* as possible.
*The concept of diversity acquires a fundamental role, by associating biodiversity with socio-economic and cultural diversity. Thus, this concept comes to have three perspectives: 1) ecological, where diversity means genetic, species and ecosystem diversity; 2) socioeconomic, where diversity refers to the particular features of individual economic organizations and social systems; and 3) cultural, where the ethnic peculiarities and patrimonies of human communities can be considered as the basis for obtaining social equity.
(In: Biodiversity of Chile, heritage and challenges: Cultural traditions and biodiversity. Authors: Victoria Castro and Marcela Romo http://www.mma.gob.cl/librobiodiversidad/1308/articles-36720_recurso_1.pdf Consulted on May 7, 2020 .