MAIOs social housing scheme in the suburbs of Barcelona walks a tightrope between budgetary restraint and environmental responsibilityOn approaching MAIOs new social housing scheme in the Barcelona suburb of Sant Feliu de Llobregat on a hot day, it seems as if Christo and JeanneClaude have given the entire fivestorey structure their trademark fabric wrap treatment. But what you see is in factthe lightweight metal exoskeleton that supports heavy textile curtains made from the standard PVCbacked canvas material used for most awnings in Spain. With little maintenance required and a long lifespan, these curtains are one of the lowcost strategies that the architects have employed to control solar heat gain within the building. The 40 housing units in this scheme have an average floor area of 65m2 and mean monthly rental cost of 550, amounting toapproximately 8.40/m2. This stands in starkcontrast tothe 16.20/m2 listed by Barcelonas city councilas the standard price for a rentalunit in the second half of2023.Like the rest of Spain, and many other parts of the world, Barcelona suffers from anacute housing crisis. Its roots lie largely in the neoliberal politics of the late 1990s, which ushered in a wave of deregulation andprivatisation that, in turn, resulted in aconstruction boom led mostly by private developers. In 2006, at the peak of the real estate bubble, there was no discussion at allabout housing, Ada Colau, Barcelonas mayor between 2015 and 2024, noted in 2013. It was not a main topic in politics nor in the mass media. After the crash of 2008 and its terrible effect on many peoples finances, groups such as Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (Platform for People Affected by Mortgages, or PAH) ofwhich Colau was one of the founders started campaigns to stop foreclosures and evictions, and even broughtabout changes inthe legal framework. One such change occurred inJuly 2018, when thecity council approved a new law that required any residential development of more than 600m2 to allocate 30 per cent ofthe surface area to social housing.In this context, Barcelonas long tradition of holding architectural competitions to develop public housing was rekindled in thelate 2010s. Today, the construction ofsocial housing is widely promoted by adiverse set of institutions operating atregional, metropolitan and municipal levels.The Institut Metropolit de Promoci de Sl i Gesti Patrimonial (Metropolitan Institute ofLand Development and Property Management, orIMPSOL) is one such publicbody to organise social housing competitions in Barcelonas metropolitan area, including that for the Sant Feliu de Llobregat scheme.However, IMPSOL and the other agencies continue to operate under restrictive regulations and low construction budgets, sometimes making it difficult to experiment with new materials and typologies. Most social housing in Barcelona is made from concrete. There are a few exceptions: Lacols cooperative housing scheme, La Borda (ARJuly/August 2019), was Spains tallest building to be built entirely from timber at the time of its completion in2018; a year later, the first building as part of thecitys programme Allotjaments de Proximitat Provisionals (Close Proximity Temporary Housing Programme, or APROP) used recycled shipping containers. But these are exceptions rather than the rule economies of scale mean that concrete is still the most affordable construction material available toarchitects, its environmental harms notwithstanding. MAIOs new housing block, which uses concrete sparingly for thestructural frame and floor slabs, and terracotta blocks for the facade, managed afinal construction cost of 950/m2, in contrast to the 2022 national average of1,700m.The use of concrete for the slabs is advantageous when used properly. Anna Puigjaner, cofounder of MAIO, explains that during the winter the buildings large windows allow the floor slabs which have ahigh thermal mass and are only covered byterrazzo floor to capture heat from the sun due to the angle of incidence at this latitude. This heat radiates at night to warm up the interior spaces. On hot summer days, on the other hand, the buildings internal courtyard creates a wind tunnel that is designed to channel the prevailing winds during the afternoon the worst time of dayin terms of high temperatures. This captures the wind from the sea, directing itinto the courtyard, and distributing it across the housing block. The facade is built using local terracotta block, a humble building material with a long tradition in Barcelona, and is clad with an external thermal insulation system called WallTerm, which provides a significant reduction in energy consumption for heating and air conditioning. Alongside the curtains, these passive systems help dramatically reduce energy consumption throughout the year.Social housing in Barcelona is maintained by the agency in charge in this case IMPSOL. Representatives from IMPSOL arein constant touch with the residents, who also have a responsibility to care forthebuilding and alert the agency ifanything needs specific attention. This maintenance model demands that residents are active participants in the care of their building they need to understand how andwhen to use the outdoor textiles, atwhich times of day to open and close windows to make the most of the wind tunnel, and so on. This active engagement isaimed at making residents feel more incontrol of their quality of life.Measures have also been taken internally to give residents agency and a maximum amount of space. Puigjaner explains that the primary constraint that MAIO worked under was to fit as many units as possible into the building, resulting in a relatively compact structure. One way of carving backa little space for residents was to make the interior partitions from plasterboard, because it is thin and will still have the desired insulation properties. At a width of 70mm, compared with the 100-150mm of a standard terracotta block, the space created may notseem like much, but itadds up to an increased and very valuable usable surface area for each unit. Similarly, although thedesign team wished to incorporate continuous balconies on the entire block, connecting all the residents, this was not allowed under current building regulations instead, the balconies use the maximum space allowed, which is 50 per cent of thefacade.The strict budgetary and regulatory framework that comes with building social housing can make it seem that architects have little agency or autonomy in the design and material choices when building within this typology. But MAIO, in addition to designing a lowcost building, have managed to infuse it with their philosophy of nonhierarchical design. Born out of a deep interest in the ways that the normative nuclear family a married heterosexual couple with their own biological children has changed over time, and in many instances been replaced by other forms ofkinship and communality, this philosophy renders all rooms the same or a similar size, and therefore importance, in an architecture that is meant to evolve and adapt rather than stay fixed. The nonhierarchy of the social housing scheme in Sant Feliu de Llobregat is a direct architectural response to this idea. It is an inclusive design that departs from traditional housing plans, which create spaces for specific and prescribed uses. The architects, as well asthe agency that commissioned it, should becommended for experimenting with this engrained typology2024-10-21Ethel Baraona PohlShare AR October 2024Buy Now