Project material
- Category
- Affordable Housing
- Typology
- Social Housing
- Year
- 2026
- Area
- ≈ 2.598 m² construidos · 5 pisos (lote 640 m²)
- Location
- Colombia
- City
- Bogotá, Cundinamarca
Pale brick, planters and a courtyard: social housing that blooms inwards
Las Flores stands at Carrera 109B # 140-06, in Suba, north-west Bogotá. It is a neighbourhood street: two- and three-storey houses, exposed brick walls, young trees on the pavement and the low, cold light of the savanna coming in at an angle in the afternoons. The building occupies a 640-square-metre plot between party walls, and everything in the project follows from that condition — narrow, deep, with a single free face.
Because the façade alone cannot light the back of the floor plate, the building opens a courtyard inside itself. The homes on all five floors are arranged around that void, and through it light and air reach the access gallery, laid with hexagonal tiles and lined with continuous brick planters along the railings. The ground floor is given over to shared services: gatehouse, service rooms, refuse room, bicycle parking and a covered pedestrian route linking the street to the courtyard.
At the top, the communal terrace crowns the building with a games room and a barbecue area, and a band of planting that peeks over the upper edge of the façade. Pale brick walls, black window frames and metal planters projecting over the street compose a sober front that nonetheless always carries something green above it.
The void that makes the plot liveable
The first line drawn was not a volume but a hole. On a 640-square-metre plot with a single available façade, choosing to give up built area for a courtyard is what sets the quality of every home: without it, half the building would sit in the dark. The unit types were then fitted around that void — living-dining room, bedrooms, main and guest bathroom, laundry area — the circulation was pushed to the courtyard perimeter, and planters were set on every level so the void would read as inhabited rather than as a mere shaft. The project went through the permit process at Bogotá's Curaduría Urbana Nº 1, with an observations report and replies, and its area schedule is still being updated: this is a building in progress, not a closed drawing.
The site. 640 m² in Suba, between party walls: a narrow, deep site with a single free face onto Carrera 109B. The ground floor. The ground floor is freed for shared uses: lobby, bike room, waste, parking and a covered path from the street to the courtyard. The void. The facade cannot light the back of the plan, so the building gives up floor area to open courtyards that bring down light and air. 53 homes. Four floors of homes around the voids, with the access corridor along their edge: 53 homes on a 640 m² site. The terrace. On top, the shared terrace with a games room and barbecue area, and a strip of planting that peeks over the edge of the facade.
