Living systems of knowledge and memory
We design, rebuild, and activate the structures that allow information to move, take shape, and carry meaning across time. Our work turns dispersed materials, fragile workflows, and improvised practices into coherent, resilient systems of knowledge and memory.
Understanding & Diagnosis. We analyze how information and memory move inside an organization or collective. We reveal strengths, breakdowns, gaps, and opportunities for improvement: the elements that determine whether a system can grow or collapse.
System design & Integration. We create or repair the structures that give knowledge coherence: cataloguing and classification systems, metadata models, controlled vocabularies, thesauri, and taxonomies. When needed, we define semantic relationships and design linked-data frameworks and ontologies that allow information to interoperate across platforms and collections. These are the frameworks, relationships, and organizational logics that allow information to be found, connected, and used with clarity.
Communication & Expression. We transform systems into editorial and visual forms that make knowledge visible and accessible: digital libraries, websites, dossiers, books, maps, educational materials, and other tools that strengthen communication.
Continuity & Stewardship. We design governance practices, workflows, training processes, and documentation routines that sustain systems over time. The goal is autonomy: structures that can evolve without external dependence.
We build from reality. Every organization has its own history, materials, constraints, and rhythms. We design from those conditions, not from pre-packaged solutions or fashionable trends.
We privilege coherence. A system functions only when its internal logic is clear. Clarity comes before speed or scale; without it, processes eventually fail.
We prioritize practice. Technology is meant to support real practices and needs. We choose or design our tools to follow the organization’s logic and never to impose one.
We design for evolution. A system is complete only when it can grow and evolve. And it can only evolve if the organization is equipped to maintain it after delivery.
We focus on what holds. No noise, no gimmicks, no cosmetic innovation. Our work is structural: precise, rigorous, contextual, and built to last.
We document the actual behavior of information and memory: how they originate, circulate, accumulate, or disappear. This analysis reveals where the system flows and where it falters — its bottlenecks, risks, and opportunities — and provides the empirical baseline for all subsequent decisions.
We recover dispersed materials, reconnect fragmented archives, and reassemble documents and datasets so they become usable again without erasing their history or diversity.
We build the frameworks that organize knowledge and memory: classification schemes, cataloguing guidelines, structural models, and the navigational structures and logics that align with the organization’s real practices.
We design the semantic structures that give meaning and relation: controlled vocabularies, terminologies, taxonomies, and metadata models that enable interoperability across languages, domains, and platforms.
For complex or interdisciplinary environments, we model entities, relationships, processes, and events with formal semantic precision, enabling integration, advanced discovery, and analytic reasoning when needed.
We translate structural decisions into communicative and functional outputs. This includes configuring digital collections, preparing publishable datasets, and producing editorial or visual materials that allow knowledge to circulate. The focus is on implementing the system so that it becomes visible, usable, and operational.
We embed documentation routines into everyday workflows: practical tools, update cycles, and continuity practices that allow the system to remain coherent and current over time.
We define the stewardship structures that keep a system alive: roles, responsibilities, maintenance procedures, policy frameworks, and decision paths. The objective is long-term autonomy — systems that endure and evolve internally.
The name comes from minimal but powerful architecture — flexible, resilient, and built entirely through relation. It mirrors the systems of knowledge and memory we design.
It also carries a territorial resonance. In the world of the Muisca indigenous people of the altiplano cundiboyacense, spiderwebs were believed to be used to build the rafts that helped the dead cross a river in the afterlife. It is a reminder that in this region, crossings, threads, and woven forms have long been part of how meaning is carried.
Tela de Araña (/TEH-lah-deh-ah-RAHN-yah/, Spanish for "spiderweb") is an independent studio based between Bogotá and Quisquiza, in the Colombian altiplano cundiboyacense. Founded by Edgardo Civallero, it works at the intersection of knowledge organization, semantic design, and editorial-documentary structures.
Email: contacto@teladearania.com or ECivallero@teladearania.com
Bogotá & Quisquiza (La Calera, Cundinamarca), Colombia
