Seventy years ago, in the heart of Bogota, a building rose that over time would become a symbol of Colombian engineering. The Cudecom building opened its doors in 1955 at the intersection of Calle 19 and Avenida Caracas, then part of the capital’s urban dynamism.
With its eight stories and a modern structure for its time, it became a benchmark of the city’s growth and transformation. Two decades later, it would remain important not only for its architecture, but for what it represented for engineering and urban development in Bogota, when it was moved as a single block 29 meters to the south due to the widening of Calle 19 — an achievement considered a marvel of engineering at the time.
Today, 70 years after its construction — and 51 after its relocation — Cudecom is still standing, although its walls bear the marks of time and graffiti that tell other urban stories. Its existence and the episode that made it famous mark a before and after in the way urban challenges are addressed in expanding cities.
The history of this building is not only that of a set of offices, but that of a city in transformation that found, in a structure of concrete and steel, the opportunity to show what it was capable of doing when it set out to confront the impossible.
Cudecom: Colombia’s building that moved 29 meters turns 70
In the early 1970s, Bogota was beginning to strongly feel the growth of its population and the need to modernize its roads. Calle 19, a crucial artery connecting the west with the city center, had to be widened to handle the increase in traffic.
However, what seemed like a simple road-engineering challenge soon became a major urban dilemma: the Cudecom building stood exactly where the new roadway needed to pass. Demolishing it would have been the easiest option, but it would also have meant losing a structure in good condition and valuable to the city.
Faced with this challenge, an idea emerged that to many seemed out of control: instead of destroying the building, why not move it? The proposal not only defied the conventional logic of urban construction at the time, but also required a level of boldness and creativity rarely seen in Colombia up to that point. The challenge was no small one: to displace a structure weighing several thousand tons without dismantling it, while maintaining its integrity and functionality.
October 6, 1974, was etched into the memory of those who lived through that day and into the archives of Colombian civil engineering. Under the direction of engineer Antonio Páez Restrepo, a team of nearly 400 people set out to move the building 29 meters to its new location, making room for the widening of the street.
What followed was a demonstration of precision, patience, and technique: the building was mounted on steel rollers and pushed with hydraulic jacks over the course of several hours, advancing only centimeters at a time.
For nearly ten hours, the building “walked” slowly until it reached its destination, moving its 7,000 tons of weight as a single block. The operation was followed by thousands of Bogotá residents who gathered in nearby streets and by television viewers across the country who watched the broadcast of the event. What for many had been an urban obstacle became a popular spectacle and a source of national pride.
The relocation not only concluded with technical success, but also opened a new chapter for the building. Once in its new position, two additional floors were added and a parking lot was built in the space freed by its former location. The engineering behind the operation was recognized with national awards, and for nearly 30 years the Cudecom Building appeared in the Guinness Book of World Records as the heaviest structure of its kind ever moved in the world.
El desplazamiento del edificio Cudecom en Bogotá el 6 de octubre de 1974, una de las primeras maniobras de alta ingeniería en Colombia. pic.twitter.com/BvslN6P1Ox
— Monedas de Colombia 🇨🇴 (@MonedasColombia) October 9, 2018
Legacy and urban memory
Seventy years later, the Cudecom building remains a silent witness to Bogotá’s growth. Its presence at the corner of Calle 19 and Avenida Caracas speaks of a city that has changed its face and needs several times, but that in its history found a way to reconcile modernization with preservation.
Although today the building shows signs of neglect and graffiti that speak to other urban challenges, it remains a benchmark of what Colombian engineering can achieve in the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges.
Beyond the record and the media attention surrounding the day of its relocation, Cudecom is a symbol not only of the possibilities of modern engineering, but also of the alternatives available for heritage preservation in the face of the problems of urban growth. The path marked in 1974 showed that the solution is not always to demolish and rebuild, but to think, innovate, and make use of what already exists.
That building, which for years served as the headquarters of the Instituto del Seguro Social—centralizing Colombia’s health administrative services—once “walked” 29 meters to contribute to the renewal of urban space in downtown Bogotá. Although today it is in a state of near abandonment, as 70 years since its construction are marked, the challenge for the local administration is to find an appropriate use for this giant that seems immutable in the face of the passage of time.