The project covers a plot of land in the middle of the city, bordered by mountains and former communist quarters to the north, and informal settlements from the 1990s to the south. The site has a very prominent slope: the difference between the lowest and the highest point is 27 meters, an equivalent of a nine-storey building.
Inspired by the charm of the informal settlements, OMA proposed a chequerboard-like pattern of blocks and courtyards. The sloped terrain allows for every building to look over the other, creating various views over the surroundings. The configuration reaches a high density while leaving 70% of the site open for public plazas and green spaces. The development is car-free and all parking is underground. The main street running through the development brings together commercial activities and at the same time connects the future Metrobosco green belt and the new ring road planned by the municipality.
The abstract chequerboard pattern turns into a continuous array of habitable spaces by elaborating the tangent corners into architectural entities. Three typologies emerge: the ‘Straddle Core’, a vertical circulation shared by two adjacent buildings, the ‘Straddle Apartment’, an apartment spanning over two adjacent buildings, and the ‘Kissing Corner’, two tangent building corners.
Project Team : Reinier de Graaf, Jad Semaan, Roza Matveeva, Barbara Materia, Maria Aller Rey, Andrew Le, Ekaterina Nuzhdina, Zheng Zhou