Project material
- Category
- Affordable Housing
- Typology
- Social Housing
- Year
- 2022 - 2025
- Area
- 23.170 m²
- Program
- 312 apartments
- Location
- Cali, Valle del Cauca
Social housing in the heart of the city
Céntrico sits in the Primitivo Crespo neighbourhood of Cali, on the flat, hot strip that runs between Calle 25 and the Autopista Sur. The site — 7,675 square metres — was once a paint factory and is still ringed by infrastructure: the EMCALI power station to the east, its Navarro operations centre to the south and, to the north on Carrera 18, the Primitivo station of the MIO bus network. This is not a landscape site: it is a piece of finished city, with mass transit on the corner.
The project is organised into five structural units and two phases. Two thirteen-storey residential towers, with twelve apartments per floor, stand towards the back of the site; in front, along the pavement, a low band unfolds with eight commercial units split between two buildings, the gatehouse with its basement, and the community building holding the social area and the pool. That low platform acts as the urban façade: it hands shops to the street and keeps the communal life at the heart of the block. Towards the EMCALI properties the complex steps back twelve and a half metres, and along Carrera 18 it leaves a five-metre front garden.
The materials take on the valley sun without drama: Santa Fe brick in a cappuccino tone across most of the façades, and Graniplast panels running in a gradient of warm colours, with a flat roof finished in white sheeting and polycarbonate skylights. There is a coincidence that is hard to ignore: the site was called Colors, and Colors was the project's working name throughout design.
Inside, the bet is on flexibility. There is a single apartment type, of about 55 m² built — living-dining room, kitchen, laundry area, two bathrooms and a balcony — and within the same footprint it allows three ways of living: one bedroom with a generous living room and a study, two bedrooms, or three bedrooms with a study nook. On the ground floor, the same apartment gains a terrace.
From a paint factory to a residential block
The project was called Colors throughout the design years — that is the name in the design report, the drawings and the office folders — and only reached the market as Céntrico. That change of name sums up the work: turning an industrial site wedged between an electrical substation and a motorway into a piece of neighbourhood. The layout was decided by subtraction, pulling the housing away from the hard edges with generous setbacks and giving the urban frontage over to what actually wants to be on the street: the shops and the gatehouse. The design report went through client revisions in February 2022, and the complex was assembled chapter by chapter — report, specifications, drawing schedule — up to the sales kit it went to market with.
- 01 / 09
Trees first
The first move is one of conservation: the layout adapts to the site's existing trees, which are marked and kept around the complex.
Before the towers comes what was already on the site. The layout marks the existing trees and adapts to keep them: on a plot that was once a paint factory, that vegetation is the complex's first shade.
Enlarge - 02 / 09
The path of the sun
The sun's path from morning to afternoon passes over the two towers: in Cali's flat heat, the solar trajectory is the project's first condition.
Cali means flat, steady heat. The diagram follows the sun from morning to afternoon over the two towers, and the façades are read against that path: where the light arrives and where shelter from it is needed.
Enlarge - 03 / 09
Two towers, 312 homes
Two thirteen-storey towers, with twelve apartments per floor, stand towards the back of the site and gather the 312 homes away from the hard edges.
Two thirteen-storey towers, mirroring each other and with twelve apartments per floor, stand towards the back of the site. They step back twelve and a half metres from the EMCALI properties and gather the 312 homes away from the hard edges.
Enlarge - 04 / 09
The heart of the block
The pool and the children's playground sit inside the block, sheltered by the towers and the low platform; parking is spread towards the sides.
Between the towers and the low platform lies what belongs to everyone: the pool and the children's playground, sheltered from the street inside the complex. Parking is spread towards the sides so the centre stays free.
Enlarge - 05 / 09
A mixed-use project
Along the pavement, the shops, the project entrance and the community building form an active frontage that brings life to the street.
Céntrico brings housing, retail and communal life together in a single project. Along Carrera 18, the eight shops, the entrance and the community building form an active frontage: the complex gives the street commerce instead of turning its back on it with a wall.
Enlarge - 06 / 09
Air that crosses through
Cross ventilation in the standard apartment: air enters through the balcony and leaves through the kitchen, laundry area and bathroom. Conceptual diagram.
The apartment is designed for air to pass right through it. It enters through the balcony and the dining-room façade, crosses the living room and bedrooms, and leaves through the kitchen, the laundry area and the guest bathroom. The diagram is conceptual: it illustrates the path, it is not a fluid-dynamics calculation.
Enlarge - 07 / 09
Light where life happens
Conceptual distribution of daylight in the standard apartment: strongest at the balcony and bedrooms, weaker towards the kitchen and bathrooms.
Light enters most strongly through the balcony and the bedroom windows and spreads towards the living-dining room; the kitchen and bathrooms, towards the inside, receive less. It is a conceptual distribution, not a simulation: it shows the intention of bringing daylight to the spaces where life happens.
Enlarge - 08 / 09
Towers that breathe
Natural ventilation: fresh air enters through the façade and warm air leaves through chimneys on the roof.
Solar orientation, cross ventilation and the stack effect work together. Outside air enters through the openings in the façade and moves through the rooms; as it warms, it rises through vertical shafts that solar radiation heats further and leaves through chimneys on the roof. Ventilation is solved without machines, across thirteen storeys.
Enlarge - 09 / 09
Flexible apartments
Three layouts of the same apartment: one, two or three bedrooms.
A single apartment type, of about 55 m² built, allows three different lives within the same footprint: one bedroom with a generous living room and a study, two bedrooms, or three bedrooms with a study nook. The kitchen, bathrooms and balcony stay where they are; what changes is how the rest is shared out.
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