El Mirador is a mixed use project to be located in the South Bronx combing 120,000 square feet of retail and community facility space with close to 1,000 units of affordable housing. Before starting the design of our submission to this HPD sponsored developer competition, we thought about a couple of key issues and asked ourselves the following questions. How can a housing project serve as a catalyst for change in a neighborhood? And, how can affordable housing remain affordable and also break the preconceptions of what affordable housing must look like? Through a creative approach to zoning and careful consideration of the construction process we came up with a solution that does both— El Mirador.