La Balma in the El Poblenou neighbourhood shows how the qualities of a cooperative housing project can be realised with simple means on a tiny plot. After the 2008 economic crisis the Catalan capital changed its housing development policy and decided to make municipally owned land available only within a 75 year ground lease. Around the same time the architect collective Lacol formed. Their pilot project La Borda allowed them to put restrictive regulations into question and win numerous awards. Since then more and more housing cooperatives, so-called Cooperativas, have been forming. Currently more than 500 cooperative housing units have been completed, are under construction or are in planning stages.
Housing as public building
The cooperative residential building La Balma is an extension of the existing row of houses on Carrer d'Espronceda and provides the previously vacant block corner lot with striking appeal. The six storey structure appears dominant only on its western side facing the interior courtyard. The narrow northern facade, on the other hand, directs the gaze across the trees of the neighbourhood park Camí Antic de Valencia, resembling a boulevard, to the Parc Central del Poblenou, only a block away. The facades are open to all three sides of the city and feature access balconies that serve as open spaces in front of the apartments, but also as areas for communication between the residents and the neighbourhood. Three floors up from the ground level, these incisions in the building volume are oriented to the east, towards a row of trees following Calle de Espronceda. They receive sunlight in the mornings and act as a sound barrier for the apartments. The slender balconies are comprised of metal grating and cantilever outward from the white corrugated sheet metal facade. On the fifth and sixth floor the orientation of the recessed access balconies switches from the eastern to the western facade, where they offer an open view extending towards the horizon. Here, bright red slat roller blinds are hung from the metal balustrade in straight or forward inclined fashion, similar to traditional Corda Persianas. Their vivid interplay loosens up the strict, angular impression of the building volume. On the northern facade, the circulation space also becomes legible where the conventional windowed facade is replaced by access balconies. The entrance hall is an open space loggia that is separated from the neighbourhood park by a barred gate instead of an hermetic front door. The staircase at the building corner is open, from the street level to all floors above and the roof terrace. Residents who enter or leave enliven the facade, similar to actors on a theatre stage.
House and neighbourhood community
The entrance loggia leads directly into a community space with kitchen and french doors that access a slim open space bordering the interior courtyard. The three upper floors from the ground floor up feature corner rooms in the northwest, used as a yoga studio, coworking space or guest room. On the fourth and fifth floor only small rooms remain next to the elevator. They house a bathtub for senior personal hygiene and a laundry room with washing machines. The generous roof terrace occupies the entire roof space. Here, residents can hang up their laundry to dry, celebrate the surrounding view across the roofscape of Barcelona or let their children play.
Load bearing exterior walls, flexible floor plans
All 20 apartments extend between the parallel facades. They comprise french doors facing the entrance balcony and french windows along the opposite facade, enabling natural cross ventilation during the hot summer months. Different than in typical crosswall construction, ceiling slabs span from one exterior load bearing wall to the opposite one while being supported by the lateral walls of the bathrooms in the centre of the building. This allows separating apartments with demising walls consisting of lightweight construction with increased soundproofing. Rooms cover 12 m² and can be flexibly assigned to either of the neighbouring apartments. Ceiling slabs are acoustically separated by insulation set into their longitudinal joints between units.
Low cost materials, low cost building site
Inexpensive materials such as concrete block, exposed solid timber panels used as load bearing structure and galvanised metal grating provide La Balma with a rough, yet friendly appeal. Geothermal heat pumps combined with low temperature radiant wall heaters and coolers in wall-mount loam panels provide temperature control, inexpensively and efficiently. The roof surface has already been equipped with fasteners for the subsequent installation of a photovoltaic system, and similarly, piping for a greywater treatment system. The municipality is contributing financially to this model, which is also supposed to offer a solution to the housing crisis in the Catalan capital: For 2350 m² of floor area, the cooperative only has to make an annual lease payment of 1940 euro.
The flexible organisation of rooms enables responding to street noise or sunlight intake with a limited number of apartment types.
Lacol is an architect cooperative that has grown to 13 partners. Their office is located in a former factory in the middle of the Sants neighbourhood. They carefully transformed it into a small creative quarter of its own. The various users operate a café with an event space, a bookshop, a number of offices and shared meeting rooms and are organised as an association. In their office space, the two partners Cristina Gamboa (CG) and Carles Baiges Camprubí (CB) spoke with DETAIL editor Frank Kaltenbach.
How do young architects decide to form a cooperative?
CG: We began studying architecture during the boom. Each and every one of us worked as an intern for a famous starchitect, under disappointing conditions in terms of appreciation, pay and work hours. When we finished our studies, the economic crisis happened. We wanted to become self-employed, but none of us wanted to repeat the experience of working in a strict hierarchy.
How did you receive your first commission?
CB: While we were students, we started working on neighbourhood projects in our quarter. People in Sants already knew us. The municipality asked us to design a program for the remodelling of a cooperative building, dating from 1928 and historically listed, together with the residents. We also became members of the competition jury and awarded Harquitectes the first prize. The building became the popular citizen centre Lleialtat Santsenca.
To which degree is La Balma different from your first cooperative housing project, La Borda?
CB: La Borda was an experiment which developed over the course of time. The competition for La Balma wasn't only about architecture. From the very beginning we had to deliver a complete project, including structural engineering, costs, a sustainability concept and a social concept. One of the altogether 20 apartments is operated by a charity for unaccompanied minor refugees.
How did you gain the required expertise for such a complex process?
CG: We worked together with the La Boqueria cooperative. They supported us with detail planning.
CB: Our client is a large association, the Sostre Civic. They have their own planning association with architects, engineers and quantity surveyors. They even have their own association construction firm. La Balma, to them, was a pilot project to show the way for many future projects.
You used BIM to plan the building. How does that work within a participative planning process and many related changes?
CG: We modelled the solid timber load bearing structure in 3D, as well as the facades and all installation lines for building services. During operation the BIM model serves the users for building maintenance and facility management purposes.
CB: We left the interior design of the apartments to the users. That is why they aren't part of the 3D planning.
How did you moderate the participative process?
CG: Already during the competition phase we put together workshops with the future residents in order to identify their demands and needs.
CB: In order to meet the tight deadlines, we provided the residents with clear specifications. We formed working groups for particular topics, so people didn't have to discuss everything at once. We proposed a structure for the apartments, including three variants for the kitchen. Living rooms can either extend from one facade to the other or can be situated along the access balcony. This way the same apartment type can be adapted, with simple means, to its particular location within the building - in the east, along the noisy street or on the upper floors in the west, where it can be extremely hot in summer.
What do particular materials mean to you?
CB (laughs): We use concrete block because it's the cheapest you can get at the moment. What is more important to us than aesthetics is that we can realise our principles within every project, differently each and every time.
