Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá Campus for Social Scientists

The Bogotá campus of the National University of Colombia (UNAL) is more than just a place where the academic community works, studies, learns, and spends a good part of their lives. It is the territory of the Ciudad Universitaria. There, several communities coexist and dispute the right to live on what used to be the grounds of an old hacienda and, since 1935, has been a citadel: a vibrant, complex, and dynamic place of refuge where each community expresses different, sometimes overlapping, territorialities. In the University City, there are those who spend their entire days eating, sleeping, playing, arguing, playing music, working, flirting, teaching, and studying. The campus itself, known as the “white city”—due to the simplicity, color, and symmetry of its original architecture—is one of the most important heritage components of the UNAL and houses four museums, various museum collections, and auditoriums for the arts and debate, all open to the public. But it is not only people who consider University City their territory. Birds, horses, cows, eucalyptus trees, ancient wetlands, and countless non-human beings populate the campus and exercise their own ecosystemic territoriality, sowing the pastures and skies with memories of other species.