Conversations: Alberto Botero & Mariana Botero
Alberto Botero is an architect-developer in Pereira, Bogotá. We connected through his daughter, Mariana, who is an acoustical consultant practicing in the United States and Colombia, and whom I met as a thesis student at the Boston Architectural College. We conducted the interview in Spanish, and I owe Mariana and Alberto a great deal of gratitude for speaking with me in my choppy Spanish.
“All construction in Colombia follows a civil law, Ley 388, which was brought to Colombia around 1998 and is a copy of Spain’s Urbe de Ordenamiento de España. It mandates that each municipality creates and abides by a local zoning plan (plano de ordenamiento territorial), which establishes what can be built and where. We are a development firm, and work in all stages: we envision the projects, purchase the land; design, permit, and finance directly with banks; build, and then sell the real estate.
We do have offices here that specialize in each area of the scope I just described. We have offices that work as consultants, and offices that only provide architectural services, and so on. It depends on each type of project. For instance, we would hire an electrical engineer to provide all necessary permit drawings and design the system in its entirety.
Each municipality can specify uses for their land: a historic district, for instance, or a park. In order for a community to develop a public project, such as a school, a formal process that requests qualifications for review is set in place. This process follows the Ley 80, which defines the award and administration of public contracts in Colombia.
In our firm, we are a quite small group of about six or seven people. But we outsource a lot to external consultants, so indirectly we work with about 200 other people, spanning from architects to engineers to product reps, etc. The firm funds the entire project, and aims to receive a profit of about 12-15% in return. This percentage oscillates depending on the kind of development project.
If an architect only works in the design aspect of the construction process, that person likely earns a decent, living wage. But if an architect is also the developer, the profit is far higher. Architects make a comparable wage to adjacent consultant professions, like engineers, and are able to charge a higher fee because of the coordination and supervising scopes, which are specialized and lie in the architect’s purview.
I decided I would be an architect in high school, with the influence of a cousin who would let me go into his office and see all the hand drawings. When I graduated and began working, I fell in love with construction. I enjoyed working in the field, sourcing materials, getting my hands dirty - not sitting in an office listening to classical music! I have now been in the administration part of the business for a while, so it has been a long time since I last drew by hand.
Our office keeps a relaxed atmosphere - we want our employees to be relaxed and satisfied with the environment. There are problems, sure, but that’s why we are paid - to solve problems. If a client is unsatisfied, for instance, we work to solve the issue as quickly as possible. Our philosophy is that the post-sale period is almost more important that the pre-sale. We need the client to be happy in order for us to keep in business, so we always have post-occupancy evaluations and surveys, to ensure we have delivered on our goals and the client is satisfied with the service.
If I could change the profession in Colombia, I would start with the education curriculum. The schools only teach architects how to design; they don’t cover the standards and regulations that make up practice. Architects never learn how to develop a client contract or how to administer their finances or a business. It is so important that the education process to become an architect include these aspects that are often treated as tangential.”
As told to GB.
