From a house to the headquarters of two parks.
Between August and December 2024, with Patrimonio Natural (Colombia’s Fund for Biodiversity and Protected Areas) and funding from KfW (German development bank), MARA turned a house acquired by National Parks into the new administrative headquarters shared by Sierra de La Macarena and Tinigua National Natural Parks. About 229 m² of built space now hold an office with a bathroom for the head of each park, a work area for 17 staff, a reception, a multipurpose meeting room, a kitchen, an accessible restroom, a storeroom for each park and a boot-washing station.
La Macarena, gateway to the park.
The headquarters is in the town of La Macarena (Meta), a few blocks from the main square, near where the Guayabero and Losada rivers meet. The climate is humid tropical: 24 to 28 °C and about 2,500 mm of rain a year.
Adapting a house for offices.
The house was not built for offices: walls had to be demolished, spaces reorganised, electrical and plumbing networks redone and floors levelled for accessibility. During the works, the heads of both parks asked for changes —more workstations, a storeroom for each park and a boot-washing station—, which were added through a contract amendment. And since La Macarena is a remote municipality, getting specialised materials there was part of the job too.
An insulated roof and higher spaces.
The zinc roof was replaced across the whole house with polyurethane-insulated sandwich panels (about 248 m²), and the ceiling was removed to gain height and ventilation, so the walls were raised up to the roof. Gutters and downpipes were renewed and a drainage channel was built to carry rainwater away. Porcelain and ceramic tile floors, cedar doors and window frames with insect screens, cedar archive shelving, ceiling fans and LED lighting, a data network with 25 outlets and an accessible restroom with grab bars, built to Colombian technical standard NTC 6047.
The demolition debris, about 76 m³, was reused as fill on a lot in the same neighbourhood. The first photo shows the finished headquarters in December 2024; the others show the works in progress in September and October 2024, before the roof was replaced.
A base for protecting La Macarena and Tinigua.
The works were handed over on 18 December 2024, within the contract period. The result is a better-ventilated, accessible headquarters with new networks, from which the teams of both parks work and serve the community.
