Huertas Urbanas Help Age 2025 - Yemail Arquitectura

Project Details

Help Age Urban Gardens 2025

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DESCRIPTION

Let's talk about the relationship between architecture and care. About how public space can become more kind when it recognizes diverse bodies, more fragile, with specific needs. On theCerro del Volador in Ciudad Bolívar, since many years ago there have been two self-managed community gardens, by more than 60 senior people who meet weekly to sow, socialize, share and sustain their community. These gardens are, in themselves, a laboratory of self-organization and food sovereignty.

Help Age International recognized there the opportunity of linking knowledge to prototype a productive public space and kind with the elderly.

And although some of these operations may seem evident, let us think for a second about how many of the spaces that we inhabit on a daily basis are met with: leveling, decreasing slopes, expand trails, signalling paths, incorporing taller benches with armrests, raising growing tables to avoid bending, provide shade or to include railings. Deep inside, it was about understanding that inclusion is also a form of infrastructure. As small as they seem, these community actions are beginning to restore the soil, to highlight the links and codependency relationships and of care that sustain an ecosystem.

In the vegetable garden, the cycles are mixed like in a small soil choreography. Mariano and the elderly knew to agree to it. First there are the fast crops —arugula, radish, lettuce, cilantro— they announce early life. Then it comes the longer times —sauerkraut, cabbage, broccoli, carrot, tomato— that sustain the process. In between there are sneak herbs such as calendula, basil and thyme, which accompany and protect the crops. Around, living fences with nasturtium, chilco and fuchsia attract pollinators and extend the life of the garden to the landscape. Nothing comes from scratch. It was about looking for a whole different: more fragile, more aware, closer to the place´s real conditions. The garden already had a path. This project adds to it, accompanies it, strengthens it.

The wood and the metallic tiles come from other times, other constructions. Disassembled, moved, adjusted. Building with what remains is to accept that everything has a history, and which, when reunited, can become a beacon, a symbol of community work.
Thanks to Blanca, and the more than 60 members of the group of older adults from Brisas for their hospitality and their work.
Diego, Daniela and Help Age International team for the trust.
Mariano from Paisajismo Orgánico, for his wisdom, and for being a key piece in the process.
The foreman George and Angela, for the sowing.
Natalia Carrero and Sebastian Torres, and to all the team of Yemail Architecture. To Bé Studio for the registry and the beautiful video that speaks so much of energy and vitality.

DETAILS

Use

Community garden for the elderly

Area

217.71 m² + 144.60 m²

Location

Brisas del Volador, Ciudad Bolivar – Bogota

Meters above sea level

2813 m

Year

2025

Client

Help Age International + Community Breezes Flying

Design

Yemail Architecture

Project team

Antonio Yemail + Natalia Carrero + Sebastian Torres

Technical team

HelpAge International

Project coordinator

Diego Collazos

Technical Specialist

Sion Jones

Project officer

Daniela Vasquez

Specialist in Agro-ecology

Andrea Fajardo

Communications

Nelson Tamayo

Construction and Landscaping

Marian Daly

Photo credits

Santiago Beaume + Paola Bermudez

Categories: City