Roofing in Colombia

Colombia has Caribbean and Pacific coasts, three Andean ranges and a large share of the Amazon basin, so its roofs vary from palm-thatched communal houses in the rainforest to clay tile in the colonial cities and coffee towns and fibre-cement and metal sheet in modern housing. The brand name eternit is used as a generic word for fibre-cement sheet.

Climate and hazards

• Earthquakes, the main structural concern of the national building regulations.
• Very heavy rain on the Pacific coast and in the Amazon.
• Heat and humidity on the Caribbean coast.

Roofing history

Indigenous. In the northwest Amazon, Eastern Tukanoan peoples such as the Barasana, Makuna, Tanimuka and Desana built malocas, large communal houses shared by several related families, each with its own hearth. Their roofs are thatched with palm leaves. A 2020 study with five Indigenous communities near Leticia described one of the most prized thatches of the Colombian Amazon: leaves of the palm Lepidocaryum tenue braided along split stems of Socratea exorrhiza. Thatching a house of 48 m² (517 sq ft) needed the palms of roughly 1 ha (2.5 acres) of forest.

Colonial. Spanish towns were built with masonry, adobe and clay tile roofs. At Cartagena, the Caribbean port whose fortifications were begun in 1586 and extended in the 18th century, the San Pedro district has palaces in the Andalusian style, and the San Diego and Getsemaní quarters housed merchants, craftsmen and artisans. Cartagena was inscribed by UNESCO in 1984 and the river port of Santa Cruz de Mompox in 1995.

19th-century coffee frontier. Settlers from Antioquia moving south into the central Andes in the 19th century developed a building tradition based on bahareque, a flexible system of timber or bamboo frames with earth and cane infill. UNESCO's description of the Coffee Cultural Landscape notes that more than half of the walls there are still built this way, covered with a layer of bamboo, with clay tile roofs and sliding roofs adapted for drying coffee.

20th century. Fibre-cement corrugated sheet and corrugated zinc spread widely. Colombia's 1973 census already listed "zinc or synthetic ('eternit') tile" as a roof category alongside concrete slab, clay tile, and straw, grass or palm.

Traditional and vernacular roofs

• Maloca: Amazonian communal house with palm thatch (see maloca).
• Bahareque house of the coffee region with clay tile roof; some have sliding roof sections for drying coffee beans.
• Teja de barro on adobe and masonry in colonial towns.

Roofing today

Fibre-cement sheet, metal sheet, clay tile and concrete slabs are all widely used.

Codes, standards and regulation

The national seismic building regulation is NSR-10 (2010), listed as in force in a 2012 comparative review of Latin American codes.

Notable roofs

• Cartagena (UNESCO 1984): colonial houses with balconies and Andalusian-style palaces within extensive fortifications.
• Santa Cruz de Mompox (UNESCO 1995).
• Coffee Cultural Landscape of Colombia (UNESCO 2011): bahareque houses with clay tile and sliding drying roofs.

Local roofing terms

• Teja de barro: clay tile.
• Eternit: generic term for fibre-cement roofing sheet.
• Zinc: corrugated metal sheet.
• Bahareque: timber or bamboo frame with earth infill.
• Losa: concrete slab.
• Maloca: Amazonian communal house.