Ciudadela La Felicidad

Spring 2025 - Design Studio Arch 704
Bogota, Colombia

Critic: Winka Dubbeldam
Collaboration with: Jun Li

What does happiness look like in a city shaped by pollution, displacement, and forgotten rivers? For us, happiness begins with repair—a slow, rooted act of returning life to what was once ignored. Along the polluted edge of Río Fucha, where flooding, contamination, and fractured zoning have long reinforced a vicious cycle of ecological and social disrepair, we imagine a space of ritual, research, and renewal. Here, phytoremediation becomes poetry: flowers and aquatic plants clean the river, absorbing heavy metals and toxins, standing as symbols of resilience and quiet resistance.

The Citadel of Happiness is not just an architecture complex—it is an evolving ecosystem for both humans and wildlife. Here, phytoremediation becomes both science and the lifestyle: flowers and aquatic plants clean the river, absorbing pollutants and softening floodwaters. The architecture doesn’t resist water; it invites it in—with integrated wetlands, permeable landscapes, and hydrological buffers that shift the paradigm from separation to symbiosis.

Harris Yuxiang Hao - Portfolio - Selected Work 2018-2025