Nestled amidst the towering and opulent Panama City, the informal settlement of Boca La Caja stands as a testament to community resilience and spirit. Despite its numerous challenges, the neighbourhood has an extensive history of self-improvement and significance as a spatial manifestation of the people who live there. The Ouroboros seeks to double down on the benefits informality has provided to this space, by facilitating its expansion and furthering its sustainable iteration, through a proposed Tinker Station (space in which built environment professions are reformed as a public service).

A process of incision, reclamation, and transmutation colonises an existing vegetable oil factor that bisects the site, repositioning it as the centre of the neighbourhood. Key community functions, like a library and kitchen, are transplanted into old oil tanks along with the tinker station. The final design is an invitation for inclusion, acting as a suggestion of function, construction, and growth without designating it. In doing so, it facilitates the continual rebirth of the site as guided by its inhabitants. Boca La Caja becomes the Ouroboros.