Project material
- Category
- Clustered Houses
- Typology
- Clustered Houses · Colombia
- Year
- 2008 - 2018
- Area
- 10.000 m²
- Location
- La Calera, Cundinamarca
- City
- La Calera, Cundinamarca
- Status
- Portfolio
A little village of courtyards and green roofs on the La Calera hillside
Pinar del Lago is a clustered-housing project in La Calera, Cundinamarca, on a wooded mountainside overlooking the Bogotá savanna. The cold highland climate and the slope among the pines are treated not as obstacles but as raw material: the volumes step down with the terrain and let the forest remain the protagonist.
The project springs from one precise operation: an S-shaped house that, as it folds, creates two courtyards of its own. When four of those houses are assembled together, an additional courtyard of urban scale appears. That succession of scales — from the domestic patio to the shared court — weaves the ensemble together like a small village, with pedestrian paths linking the homes instead of streets dividing them.
The images of the complex present the roofscape as one more layer of landscape: planted roof modules, timber pergolas and open-air terraces, while masonry walls and generous openings frame the surrounding green. Inside, double-height spaces, wooden lattices and brick fireplaces keep the houses warm at this cool mountain altitude.
More about the project›
The site is a marvelous pre-páramo landscape, with distant views over the La Calera valley and the majestic mountain close at hand — plus every element of nature present on the ground. The client framed his vision as “a compound with the face of a small town”, an image that took hold of our creative process and suggested an engaging way to work with the site's steep slopes.
The design collaboration of maestro Carlos Mijares Bracho of Mexico, with five decades of experience in architecture, orchestrated a highly original scheme.
The composition of the complex is articulated by three “green” cloisters arranged in line. This layout addresses the first problem and gives shape to the “small town”.
At the next scale, the houses — arranged over four half-levels — adapt to the terrain in a singular way. They are courtyard houses, which grants an excellent, controlled relationship with the place, and each has a 120 m² roof garden that brings the landscape closer and offers a different way of being in the countryside. Finally, at the smallest scale, maestro Carlos Mijares' special brick bonds close the composition with the finest detail in the use of materials.
From the S to the village.
The process begins with a rigorous composition set against the topography: first the S-shaped module house, drawn and tested in digital models of the entry sequence, level-by-level cutaways and longitudinal sections; then its multiplication across the hillside, verifying that every four-house assembly kept producing the shared court. What started as a geometric figure became an urban rule of play: the same repeated "S" weaves courtyards, terraces and paths until the whole village takes shape.
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Entry view of the type house: the roof is resolved as a
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Inhabited cutaway of level 2: the family room articulates
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Longitudinal section: living room, dining room and family
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