This year marks three years since the completion of our social housing project Montaña Abou — one of our most remarkable initiatives in Curaçao. With this project, we demonstrated that social housing can be both visually appealing and serve as a unifying element between existing neighborhoods.

We felt it was important to capture the story behind the development of the project, which led to the creation of a short video in the neighborhood. In this interview, you’ll see Lyongo in conversation with Rhuendley Janzen, with whom he collaborated on the project.

Together with residents

Rhuendley, an architectural engineer, grew up in the area next to this neighborhood. He has vivid memories of growing up in this area, social and economical challenges are definitely part of the reality of his side of neighborhood. On the other side there lies a middle-class residential area. Our aim was to use Montaña Abou as a connection between the two existing neighborhoods.

We started with talking to key figures in both areas. Together with amongst others Rhuendley we then organized meetings between the residents of the two residential areas. We would walk through the opposite neighborhood with them, along with representatives of the government, the housing foundation and the developer. A lot of people didn’t meet with the people from the opposing neighborhood before – so, for many this was a first.

Mixing and meeting

Lyongo: “With this project social housing was given a lot of attention in terms of design. We wanted to make a design where you wouldn’t be able to tell if it was middle-class or social housing. It was one of the first stacked social housing projects of this size on the island. At first we wanted to make a mix between residents that rented via social housing and middle-class income residents. That was still a step too far. But we did create architecture where you can’t tell the difference between social housing and middle-income housing. When you stand in the adjacent higher-lying district, you have a good overview of the entire district.”

We’ve paid a lot of attention to the design of the stairways because we wanted to make enough space for people to meet each other. That is one of the reasons why we have a minimum size of 5 meters between the houses. This design was inspired by the alleys of Otrobanda, which have the similar size. Here people use the public space as an extension of their own home – as a space to meet the neighbors or family and friends. For us every project needs to have space for people to encounter.

Walking again through Montaña Abou

In this interview that we’ve shot in 2024, Lyongo and Rhuendley take a walk again through the neighborhood. They reflect on the project and on what the impact was of this newly developed residential area. During their visit they’ve also spoken with residents before doing the interview, to see how they feel about living here.