La Borda - Cooperative Housing | Lacol arquitectura cooperativa

La Borda housing cooperative is a development self-organized by its users to access decent, non-speculative housing that places its use value in the center, through a collective structure. The idea of a housing cooperative was born in 2012 as a project of Can Batlló driven by the community in the process of recovery of the industrial premises, and the neighborhood and cooperative fabric of the Sants neighborhood of Barcelona.

The project is located on a public land of social housing, with a leasehold of 75 years. Located in Constitució Street, in a bordering position of the industrial area of Can Batlló with a facade to the existing neighborhood of La Bordeta.

There are 3 fundamental and cross-sectional principles of the project:

(1) redefine the collective housing program
The building program proposes 28 units (40, 60 and 75m2) and community spaces that allow stretching the fact of living, from the private space to the public space to enhance the community life. These spaces are: kitchen-dining room, laundry, multipurpose space, space for guests, health and care space, storage in each plant, and exterior and semi-exterior spaces such as the patio and roofs. All of them a􏰀iculated around a central cou􏰀yard, a large relationship space reminiscent of the “corralas”, a typology of popular housing in central and southern pa􏰀s of Spain.

(2) sustainability and environmental quality
The objective is to build with the lowest environmental impact possible, both in the construction work and during its life and, above all, achieve comfo􏰀 in homes with minimum consumption, to reduce the overall costs of access to housing and eliminate the possibility of energy pove􏰀y among users. We sta􏰀ed from the conviction that the best strategy is to reduce the initial demand of all the environmental vectors of the building (energy, water, materials and waste), especially at the energy level, where we prioritized passive strategies to achieve maximum use of existing resources.

(3) user pa􏰀icipation
Self-promotion and subsequent collective management implies that the pa􏰀icipation of future users in the process (design, construction and use) is the most impo􏰀ant and differential variable of the project, generating an oppo􏰀unity to meet and project with them and their specific needs .

CLIENT: La Borda, cooperativa d’habitatges en cessió d’ús
SURFACE: 3.000 m2
LOCATION: Constitució 85-89, barcelona
CONTRIBUTORS: Arkenova, Miguel Nevado, AumedesDAP, Societat Orgànica, PAuS (Coque Claret i Dani Calatayud) and Grisel·la Iglesias (Àurea acústica)