URLO Studio Builds an Andean Bike Refuge Inspired by Ancient Pucarás in Ecuador

Bike parks rarely produce architecture worth discussing. The program is utilitarian: a place to rent gear, grab food, maybe shower. But at the foot of Pambamarca Hill outside Quito, URLO Studio has treated the brief with the same seriousness an architect might bring to a museum or a chapel. The Pamba Bike Shelter is a 899 m² linear pavilion that anchors itself into sloping agricultural land with two pigmented concrete volumes at either end, connected by a laminated timber roof that hovers over the terrain like a lookout platform. The reference point is not a sports facility but the pucarás, ancient Andean stone structures that served simultaneously as dwellings and vantage points. That dual identity, shelter and observation, runs through every decision in the project.

What makes the building genuinely compelling is how it refuses to separate architecture from landscape. The site sits within a hacienda that has undergone decades of reforestation, surrounded by forests, ravines, seasonal crops, and bike trails. URLO Studio responded with a dogtrot form: the building is open through its center, funneling views of the mountain behind and the bike tracks in front. The result is a structure you look through as much as you look at, which is exactly the right posture for a building on someone else's land.

A Pavilion that Reads as Landscape

From a distance, the building barely registers as architecture. The pigmented concrete end walls read as extensions of the hillside, their earth tones calibrated to dissolve into the soil and dry grasses. The timber midsection, clad and structured in laminated wood, sits lower than the eucalyptus canopy above. In fog, which is frequent at this altitude, the entire composition softens into a long horizontal smear against the slope. URLO Studio seems to have designed for these conditions deliberately: the building's impact sharpens or fades depending on weather, almost like a piece of land art.

The hillside integration is structural, not cosmetic. The pavilion is set into terraces, allowing it to follow the natural grade without requiring heavy earthworks. Six portal frames of laminated timber generate the wide overhangs that protect the interior from the Andean climate while keeping the section thin. The roof projects outward like the brim of a hat, framing the horizon, the forest, and the movement of riders on the tracks below.

Concrete Anchors, Timber Bridge

The organizational logic is straightforward and effective. Two solid concrete volumes sit at each end of the plan: one houses the reception and bike shop, the other contains the kitchen and restaurant-café. Between them, the lightweight timber roof shelters an open central zone with dining areas, lounges, picnic tables, planters, and sunken seating. The contrast between the dense, opaque endpoints and the transparent, permeable middle gives the building a rhythm that is easy to read from any angle. At twilight, with interior lighting on, the glazed central volume glows against the dark mass of the hillside while the concrete bookends recede into shadow.

The dusk view from the valley below reveals the building as a thin band of warm light on an otherwise dark slope, confirming its role as a signal in the landscape. It is not a beacon competing with the terrain but a campfire: modest, located, useful.

The Dogtrot and the Climate

The dogtrot arrangement is the project's most important spatial move. By leaving the center open to cross-ventilation, URLO Studio creates a passive climate strategy that sidesteps the need for mechanical systems on what is an off-grid site. Construction here required careful logistics for material transport, water, and electricity, so every passive gain matters. The wide overhangs keep rain off the seating areas while tempered glass enclosures on the front facade protect against wind without blocking views of the misty valleys and forested ridgelines.

Sitting under the covered veranda with the timber beams overhead, you can see why the architects chose the pucará as a conceptual framework. The space feels defensive in the best sense: sheltered, elevated, oriented toward what is coming. A waist-high glass partition wall encloses the central rest area just enough to break the wind, creating a zone of comfort that still feels genuinely outdoors.

Interior Life Between Concrete and Plants

The central zone operates less like a conventional interior and more like a courtyard that happens to have a roof. Stepped planters filled with ferns, philodendrons, and yellow lilies create subtle level changes that define different uses without walls. A bicycle leans against a textured wall beside planted beds. Two dogs wander the paved floor. The atmosphere is relaxed and legible, a place where the boundaries between program areas are drawn by vegetation and topography rather than partitions.

This strategy of using planters and grade changes to organize space gives the building an interior landscape that mirrors the exterior one. Native species including myrtle, white straw, and cat's tail trees populate the surrounding grounds, extending the palette of greenery from outside in. The timber post-and-beam ceiling overhead provides scale and warmth, its rhythm of columns framing views toward misty hills where figures appear and disappear in the fog.

Service Spaces with Care

The service areas housed within the concrete end volumes are handled with more attention than this building type typically receives. The kitchen is visible through a doorway from the textured panel room, with a figure in motion behind the counter suggesting the café is a real working space, not a token amenity. The bathroom features a steel trough sink and vertical sconces flanking a timber-lined mirror under an exposed plank ceiling. These are details that signal the architects understood something important: cyclists finishing a ride on muddy Andean trails deserve the same quality of space as gallery visitors in Quito.

Track and Building in Dialogue

One of the most telling images of the project shows a cyclist jumping an earthen berm right beside the rammed earth wall and timber-framed glazed facade. The proximity is deliberate. The building does not sit at a polite distance from the action; it is embedded in the landscape of the bike park itself. The tracks run past the facade, and the architecture becomes part of the scenery for riders, just as the riders become part of the scenery for those sitting inside. The flow sequence is designed around this: arrival at the reception and bike shop at one end, a pause in the central rest area, then continuation to the café and back out into the landscape.

Plans and Drawings

The floor plan confirms the linear clarity of the arrangement: service blocks at each end, planted courtyards punctuating the midsection, and a generous central zone that flows without interruption from one side to the other. The section drawing is perhaps even more revealing, showing how the sloped site is absorbed into the building's profile. The roof sits beneath the existing tree canopy, and the grade change between the two concrete volumes creates the subtle terracing visible in the photographs. The elevation drawing makes the structural logic legible: slender timber columns carry the glazed facade, while the solid end volumes provide lateral bracing and programmatic density.

Why This Project Matters

The Pamba Bike Shelter matters because it treats recreational infrastructure as a legitimate site for architectural ambition. Bike parks are booming across Latin America, and most of the buildings that serve them are metal sheds or adapted containers. URLO Studio has demonstrated that a careful reading of site, climate, and local building traditions can produce something far more resonant without inflating the budget or the ego. The off-grid constraint, which could have been an excuse for cutting corners, instead became a design driver that pushed the project toward passive strategies and honest materials.

There is also something worth noting about the conceptual framework. Referencing pucarás is not an exercise in nostalgic regionalism. These fortified structures were pragmatic responses to specific conditions: elevated terrain, the need for observation, the need for shelter. The Pamba Bike Shelter shares those conditions almost exactly. The reference works because the problems are actually analogous, not because it looks good on a concept board. That kind of intellectual honesty, where historical precedent is consulted for operational insight rather than aesthetic borrowing, is increasingly rare and worth recognizing.

Pamba Bike Shelter by URLO Studio. Located in Ascazubi, Ecuador. 899 m². Completed in 2025. Structural engineering by AP Ingeniería Civil. Timber structure by Sebastián Ponce. Contractor: HeH Constructores. Photography by JAG Studio.

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