Project material
- Category
- Affordable Housing
- Typology
- Social Housing
- Year
- 2017
- Area
- 15.000 m²
- Program
- 240 apartments
- Location
- Guaduas, Cundinamarca
- City
- Guaduas, Cundinamarca
- Status
- Portfolio
Flexible housing units
Mirador del Campanario is a social housing complex in Guaduas, Cundinamarca, a warm-climate town on the western slopes of the Andes. Its brick blocks step down the hillside, so that pedestrian paths and shared spaces look out over the old town and the mountains that surround it.
The commission from Colsubsidio was resolved with a site layout oriented by solar studies and an industrialized building system: load-bearing concrete walls cast on site and thin solid slabs, with full modular coordination. On that rational base, the facades add screens of perforated blocks that filter the sun and ventilate the interiors. Each apartment was conceived as a blank space with a fixed service band, able to take on different furniture configurations depending on how each family lives.
Sustainability was measured on the ground itself: 50.30% of the plot is green area, equivalent to 4.8 m² per inhabitant, and 1,000 m² were set aside for productive gardens, about 4.16 m² of growing space per home. The design was coordinated in Revit and included bioclimatic design reports under Colombia's Resolution 549 of 2015.
More about the project›
Mirador del Campanario is an affordable housing project conceived as an integral, sustainable proposal: it interprets the local climate in pursuit of comfort through precise design decisions, and fosters community life and social interaction.
The homes were endowed with spatial flexibility strategies, so multiple configurations are possible, adaptable to different family structures.
50.30% of the site as green area · 4.8 m² of green area per inhabitant · 1,000 m² of productive vegetable gardens · 4.16 m² of productive area per housing unit. Composition criteria: bioclimatic siting and urban sustainability strategies.
From the design phase, every constructive element of the project was modulated; this strategy achieved a high degree of material efficiency, ease of construction and optimization of the area available for the housing units.
The industrialized construction system consists of cast-in-place concrete load-bearing walls and thin solid slabs.
The buildings are sited to reduce the surface exposed to direct solar radiation while harnessing the prevailing winds, which keep the apartments at comfortable temperatures using natural cross ventilation as the only passive conditioning strategy.
The housing units themselves were zoned internally following sustainability criteria:
A blank space each family gets to finish designing.
The project began with a 2016 competitive bid built around one clear idea: interconnectable housing blocks and a structural facade working as a sunscreen. In the studio, that idea was tested with working models: first the empty unit — only the strip of bathrooms and kitchen against one side — and then five different furniture configurations within the same perimeter, proving the plan could host different ways of living without moving a single wall. Construction confirmed the other pillar of the initial sketch: concrete walls cast on site rising floor by floor with metal formwork, finished in exposed brick.
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Solar study over the site plan: the sun path of October 1st defines the optimal, intermediate and acceptable orientation ranges used to rotate each block on the hillside.
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Daylight simulation of the typical floor plan: living spaces gather where daylight is most generous, while services occupy the dimmer zones.
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Furniture pieces as working tokens: scale beds, closets and cabinets used to rehearse how families might appropriate the flexible unit.
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The blank space: the unit model shows the fixed kitchen-and-bathroom band and leaves the rest of the plan free.
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Configuration 1: a first way of inhabiting the unit, with bedrooms lined up against the service band.
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Configuration 2: the same perimeter takes on additional bedrooms without touching the structure.
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Configuration 3: a three-bedroom variant with a compact living area next to the kitchen.
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Configuration 4: the furniture rotates and the center of the plan opens up as shared space.
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Configuration 5: the fifth tested layout confirms the plan supports different ways of living without moving walls.
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The site from above: concrete walls cast in place advance in stages down the hillside, next to the first finished blocks.
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Building system up close: metal formwork, load-bearing concrete walls and brick enclosures rising over the slab.
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