Project material
- Category
- Multifamily Housing
- Typology
- Multifamily Housing · Colombia
- Year
- 2022
- Area
- 21.528 m² (área construida)
- Location
- Colombia
- City
- Cartagena, Bolívar
Oval towers and linear blocks under the flat Caribbean light of Serena del Mar
Serena del Mar is the new city growing north of Cartagena, about fifteen minutes from the historic center, reached from the Cartagena–Barranquilla ring road. Strada sits there on a strip next to Tierra Baja, still surrounded by a green plain and neighboring Trevi and Castelo, two sibling compounds in the same sector.
The gated community is resolved with nine white five-story blocks that alternate two ways of inhabiting the block: five oval-plan towers, with curved corners and continuous balconies, and four linear blocks facing the boulevard. Together they hold two hundred and seventy-eight apartments, with one parking space per home.
Shared life is delivered in two stages: the first brings the amenity building — lounge, café room, multipurpose hall, laundry, playroom, gym and a rooftop BBQ terrace with timber pergolas open to the green horizon; the second adds the playground and the pool area for adults and children with a jacuzzi, planted at the center of the courtyard.
From Serenísima 5 to Strada.
The project entered the studio as the commercial proposal "Serenísima 5," and that working name accompanied the whole process: urban design proposals in May 2022, the pool area designed between July and August of the same year, and a descriptive brief built on the basis of Trevi, the sibling project already developed in Serena del Mar. The alternation of ovals and linear bars, present since the first urban schemes, ended up giving the compound its definitive street name: Strada.
The site. 1.53 ha in Serena del Mar, Cartagena, between the boulevard and the old road to Bayunca. Before drawing towers, the rules: an 8 m front garden and a 10 m rear setback. Phase one. Phase one runs on its own: 124 homes in two ovals and two bars, with the gatehouse, plant rooms and the clubhouse. Phase two. Phase two adds 154 homes in three ovals and two bars, and completes the core with adult and children’s pools, a jacuzzi and a playground. The bar. 40 m blocks with no basement: the ground floor holds parking and four floors of homes sit above, eight per floor. Open ground. Nine five-storey blocks for 278 homes cover 30% of the site; the rest goes to green areas, paths and the pool core. The typical floor. Eight 57 m² flats per floor in each bar, each with its own balcony, around a single core. The scheme. The full model: ovals with continuous balconies toward the boulevard, bars at the back and the pool core between both phases. The finishes. White graniplast facades, cream slab bands and grey aluminium window frames.
