The mixed-use development in Nuevo Cuscatlán combines over 400 residential units, a commercial district, and a preserved forest in a single hybrid building

Carazo Arquitectura presents LTR1, a 60,265 m² mixed-use residential development in Nuevo Cuscatlán, in the metropolitan area of San Salvador, El Salvador, recently named Jury Winner and Popular Choice Winner at the 14th Annual Architizer A+Awards in the Unbuilt – Multi-Unit Housing (L >10 Floors) category. The project applies the practice's research framework, Tropical Vertical Urbanism, which explores how dense vertical development in tropical cities can integrate housing, commerce, ecology, and public life into a single interconnected system.

A hybrid building instead of a tower

Contemporary residential towers typically separate their functions into layers: commerce at the ground floor, housing above, and landscape reduced to residual space or rooftop amenities. LTR1 proposes a different model. The building grows vertically, horizontally, and around its site, combining more than 400 middle-income residential units with retail, gastronomy, and shared social infrastructure within a continuous built environment.

"The project evolves from the typical notion of a tower to a vertical and horizontal neighborhood, where there is no beginning or end — a continuous built environment that relates without obstacles to the nature within and outside the site," says Rodrigo Carazo, founder of Carazo Arquitectura.

Architecture generated by the site

The site contains an existing forest at its center. Instead of clearing the landscape to accommodate the building footprint, the design lets the forest determine the architecture: the building bends into an oval configuration around the trees, preserving ecological continuity across the site. This central landscape organizes circulation, public space, and residential life.

The massing also responds to the surrounding topography. It was generated by geometrizing photographic profiles of El Picacho and the San Salvador volcano taken from the site, translating the mountain contours into the roofline while guiding orientation, shading and volumetric carve-outs.

Program and scale also shaped the form. Commercial volumes facing the city are kept to one or two stories — the height at which retail and gastronomy function — creating a pedestrian scale at street level. The front of the building opens toward the city, connecting pedestrians to the commercial area before rising into the residential volumes above.

Extending urban life vertically

At the base of the development, a commercial and gastronomic district named Quadra operates as an extension of the surrounding city, with restaurants, retail, public plazas and gathering spaces activating the ground level. Collective life continues throughout the building: coworking spaces, gardens, terraces, wellness facilities, and shared amenities are distributed vertically, forming a sequence of interconnected public and semi-public environments that bridge architecture and landscape.

Designing with climate

Environmental performance is embedded in the spatial organization. Carved voids in the massing form shaded courtyards, sky gardens, and cross-ventilated circulation, acting as environmental buffers that provide daylight and passive cooling suited to the tropical climate. Materials combine concrete and vegetated surfaces to reduce heat gain.

The amenity strategy is structured around El Salvador's ecological biomes, creating a vertical gradient that mirrors reef ecosystems, dry forests, cloud forests and rainforests: drier biomes inform the lobby zones, humid biomes the central communal spaces, and water-based ecosystems the pools and wellness areas. Flexible unit layouts accommodate remote work, shifting household structures and multigenerational living.

A framework for tropical cities

LTR1 demonstrates one application of Tropical Vertical Urbanism: vertical density understood not as accumulated floor area but as the coexistence of housing, ecology and public life within a single urban system. As tropical cities continue to grow, the framework investigates how hybrid typologies can support density while preserving ecological systems and responding to local climate.