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Architecture · Urban Void · Coworking

PLFT Coworking

A social coworking threaded into the 18-metre frame beneath a tower in Buritis, Belo Horizonte. Ideas competition 2019, developed in 2026.

The street face at night, straight on: six ramp flights zigzag across the lit coworking, climbers on the mesh screens of the wings, the planted brise band dark under the tower

Client

Ideas competition

Location

Buritis, Belo Horizonte

Category

Architecture · Urban Void · Coworking
Year
2019
01. A city on stilts

Buritis is a neighbourhood of steep slopes, and its towers rarely meet the ground. To hold a level floor plate they stand on concrete frames that step down the hill — palafitas, the local word for stilts. At Rua Maria Heilbuth Surette 1295 the street runs along the low side of the lot: from the pavement you look up into a frame 18.1 m tall, covering 720 m² of ground, with the first residential slab at the top. The survey that supplied the site filed it as a palafita gigante.

Nothing happens in it. The survey photographs show bare cut earth, exposed drainage runs, water tanks, a timber stair improvised down the slope, and a boundary wall finished with razor wire. Roughly six storeys of covered, serviced, publicly visible city, written off.

02. The dossier argues the case

The site arrived as number 10 of a numbered survey of Buritis palafitas, each recorded on the same sheet: address, coordinates, approximate area, uncovered ground on the lot, maximum height, whether the public could reach it, how visible it was from the street.

Site 10 reads 720.2 m²; 709.7 m² of uncovered ground; 18.1 m; public access possible; street visibility high. The last two lines are the brief. This void is not a backyard waiting to be discovered — it is a frontage the neighbourhood walks past every day.

03. Three floors of work

The project puts a social coworking into the frame, on the premise that Buritis has plenty of housing and almost no public room in which to start anything. Three levels are threaded into the void. The access level sits on the pavement: café, reception and a lounge, in a shallow bar — behind it the ground rises inside the frame, and the project stops where the cut begins. The two coworking floors above bridge over the slope and take the full depth of the frame. Shared desks, private rooms, meeting rooms, a photo and video studio, a recording room, a small cinema. About 1,550 m² in all; at capacity, 200 people working, plus staff.

04. Between the columns

The plans are drawn against the existing structure: 48 columns, in the same place on every floor, redrawn from the survey drawing. New slabs are laid between them; nothing is demolished to make a floor plate, and the frame goes on doing its job. Desks take the centre, where the columns are thinnest; cellular rooms take the ends; the whole street edge is given to lounge seating and planting — the softest part of the plan faces the pavement.

05. A ramp that works

The idea rests on one gesture: a ramp that zigzags up the street face, so that reaching a desk on the second floor is a walk in public, not a ride in a lift. The 2019 board drew it at a slope no one could have used. Developed in 2026, the floors are set 4.00 m apart and the ramp splits into two lanes of 1.50 m, three 18.5 m flights per storey at 7.7 %, with a landing every 0.67 m of rise. Flights on the same lane pass 2.67 m above one another, so the zigzag stays and you can walk beneath it. The 2026 development also adds what the competition drawings left out: an enclosed stair beside the lift, the second escape route that 200 people need, accessible toilets on every floor, and two doors straight off the pavement — a hall at one end, the café at the other.

06. Four elements, one material

The insertion is assembled from four families of parts — slabs, ramp, planted brise-soleil, lateral and front screens — and one material does most of the visible work: expanded steel mesh. It is cheap, light enough to hang from a structure never designed to carry a façade, and it is transparent, which is the point. The case for occupying the void rests on still being able to see through it.

07. Green against grey

The annex is deliberately unlike the tower above it. The brise band is planted, the screens carry climbers, and the ground under the ramp becomes garden. The contrast is structural to the idea: with a green mass beneath it, the tower reads as though it were floating. The palafita stops looking like an accident of the terrain and starts looking like a building that was raised on purpose.

08. Where, when, with whom

Ideas competition, Belo Horizonte, 2019 — developed in 2026. Site: Rua Maria Heilbuth Surette 1295, Buritis — 19°58'03.5"S 43°58'19.1"W. Board delivered 6 February 2019. Drawings, project development and images: Fernanda Algazal, 2026. Existing-condition photographs: competition dossier.

The coworking under the tower at blue hour, seen from across the street: the ramp's warm handrails zigzag up the face, planted brise fins below the tower
The street face at night, straight on: six ramp flights zigzag across the lit coworking, climbers on the mesh screens of the wings, the planted brise band dark under the tower
Walking up the ramp at dusk: expanded steel mesh guardrails with warm handrail light, the lit coworking behind the glass on the left
A passer-by's view along the pavement in the afternoon sun: the ramp flights stacked along the facade, climbers and flowers on the expanded steel mesh
The first coworking floor in the evening: long oak desks between the existing concrete columns, the ramp's lights beyond the glazing
Looking up at the palafita from the street in 2018: a residential tower standing on a concrete frame roughly six storeys tall, weeds and bare earth beneath it
Inside the void, two people at the far edge give the scale of the frame; water tanks and cut earth on the ground
The improvised timber stair down the cut beside the building, between the retaining wall and the razor wire
Section A: three new floors inside the 18.1 m frame, the access level stopping at the cut, the ramp landings on the street side and the new stair
Plan of the access level at +0.00: entrance hall, reception, lounge and café in a shallow bar along the pavement, the ground rising behind it
Plan of the first coworking floor at +4.00: cinema, studio and recording room at the ends, shared desks between the existing columns
Plan of the second coworking floor at +8.00: long benches at the ends, focus rooms, a shared kitchen and the rear terrace
Street elevation: the ramp climbing the face in six flights, mesh screens with climbers on the wings, the planted brise band under the tower
The four families of parts the insertion is built from: slabs, ramp, planted brise-soleil, and lateral and front screens
The competition board as delivered in February 2019: description, exploded assembly, the three plans and the street view
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