The Cauchitos Project responds to a pressing urban challenge in Ibagué, Colombia: despite its rich cultural and natural heritage, the city has some of the lowest levels of quality public space and urban green area in the region. While the World Health Organization recommends around 15 m² of green space per person for healthy cities, Ibagué currently averages roughly 6 m² per inhabitant, placing it well below global benchmarks and highlighting a deficit of accessible, high-quality public space for residents.

Our aim with Cauchitos is to change this by strengthening public life, environmental identity, and community well-being through a new model of public space, landscape design, and pedestrian connectivity. Rather than allowing fragmented development and car-oriented growth to define the future of the city, the project proposes holistic design principles that prioritize people, nature, and interconnected public realms, creating a more vibrant, healthy, and equitable urban core for Ibagué’s inhabitants.




Design principles:




The public space strategy for Cauchitos is structured around three interconnected systems. First, the project is organized by two continuous circular rings of major parks and large public spaces, which surround the site and form walkable loops that structure movement, orientation, and public life. Second, along the outer ring, public facilities and equipamientos are strategically located to ensure direct access to green public space, creating a mutually beneficial relationship between civic programs and the landscape. Finally, four natural water bodies cross the site and are preserved as green corridors, with public space designed around them to strengthen ecological continuity and pedestrian experience.
















The public space system follows an XL–L–M–S hierarchy, allowing the project to operate across multiple urban scales. At the metropolitan level, the proposal includes one extra-large park with an approximate 700-meter radius of influence, serving a broader urban area. At the neighborhood scale, seven large parks are distributed across the site, each serving an estimated three-block radius. Medium-scale public spaces are located at key intersections and are designed in paired configurations, creating connected nodes with a radius of influence of approximately one block. Finally, small-scale interventions occur along streets and mobility corridors, ensuring continuity, safety, and active public space at the pedestrian level.