The purpose of this project is the collective transformation of public habitat with the construction of a public meeting, recreation and cultural space by the community and for the community of Los Mártires neighborhood. The starting point is an already existing park (which is abandoned at the moment) located on the old banks of La Guadaleja River. For this purpose, it is necessary to re signify this public space, which is now in a bad state, as a place for social integration, and creating a space for the encounter of people from different ages, and so, the collective construction of society.

This neighborhood is characterized for having urban scale facilities (a public university, a soccer stadium) which, in spite of their importance, are not integrated with the urban and social structure of the neighborhood. This generates urban empty spaces that (taking into account the social conditions of the neighborhood) become spots for delinquents and drug consumers. We can mention La Guadaleja Park as one of these spots.

Los Martires is a working class neighborhood located in the small city of Ibagué (Colombia), inside of which there is a big qualitative and quantitative deficit of public space, and in which we can observe several risks for the consolidation of life as individuals and as a community. We can see that there is a high rate of school desertion, drugs consumption, gangs and theft, which are problems that affect all the age groups that form part the community and that normally hang out around La Guadaleja Park.
Based on the Heideggerian thesis of inhabit as inherent to humans as they are on earth, and build as essential part of living, the approach of this project creates the conditions for that at all stages (planning, construction and inhabiting) this act of affirmation of being is enhanced, based on criteria that relate the public space and architecture with its forms of production and the imaginaries that define and conditioned it.

The participants are members of the community who are politically active and have been involved with different processes and situations in which democratic practices in the neighborhood have been exercised. Their level of organization and work has allowed them to have access to governmental funding, and also to raise funds by themselves through different events like fairs and public collects. This has been done in order to develop projects with a high social impact like the public library of the neighborhood (which does not exist anymore) meal centers for children and assessment for member of the community who want to work or study.