Peris+Toral Arquitectes architecture studio has designed its largest social housing block to date, with 140 homes. This compact block responds to the street layouts and particularities of the 22@ district of Barcelona, creating space inside in the form of a dynamic bioclimatic atrium that offers its residents an intermediate space for interaction, a public street full of everyday activity. As well as acting as a social condenser, this spatial design is an environmental strategy that passively reduces energy demand.
Once again, the architects bring an integrative approach to sustainability (economic, social and environmental), guaranteeing the conditions of comfort for the inhabitants.
The project aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions during construction. To do so, work addressed the materiality of the block, seeking to reduce the materials as much
as possible:
· The use of prefabricated concrete: thanks to the chosen geometry, the cubic metres of concrete used are kept to a minimum, reducing emissions by 50%.
· The use of bare materials, using timber as cladding for its acoustic and hygroscopic capacities.
The building has a complex brief with different types of social housing: one-bedroom homes for the elderly; two-bedroom rental homes, and temporary accommodation. The various types of housing are organized on different levels: temporary accommodation on the ground floor, rental homes on the first four floors, and, on the top three levels, senior housing. The eighth floor houses the shared facilities of the homes for seniors, including a laundry, clotheslines, multipurpose spaces and urban allotments.
The building is set in the urban fabric of the 22@ district, covering the party wall and following the layout of Cerdà’s Eixample grid along the street, the chamfered corner and the passageway. The buildable depth of the plot and the height stipulated by urban planning (eight floors) require the creation of space inside in the form of courtyards to light and ventilate the various housing programmes that coexist independently in the building. The one-bedroom social homes for older people are situated on the top three floors, above four floors of two-bedroom social rental homes and a ground floor of temporary accommodation. This stratification of the brief serves to create larger courtyards on the upper floors where the smaller homes are located in order to improve daylighting throughout.
The floorplan is laid out with 20 homes per floor, arranged around a walkway that functions as a raised access, crossing a sequence of five courtyards and entrance landings. Each landing has four entranceways, formalized by wooden latticework structures that filter views and air, regulating privacy and encouraging occupants to appropriate the space. Each home is organized by two diagonal spaces—connecting a kitchen-diner with the entrance, and the living room with the terrace—that lead directly to the bedrooms to avoid the need for corridors.
Floor eight houses the shared facilities of the homes for seniors, including a community laundry, clotheslines, solarium, urban allotments and multipurpose spaces. Above, a great glass roof envelops the five courtyards, transforming them into a bioclimatic atrium that varies in function according to the season: a heat collector in winter and a thermal chimney in summer. This creation of space within the building is an environmental strategy that passively reduces energy demand, at the same time acting as a social condenser.
On the ground floor, a planted sunken yard in contact with the passageway makes for natural ventilation of the car park and provides the atrium with incoming air, key to its thermodynamic behaviour. The thermal inertia of the prefabricated concrete structure, the hygroscopicity of the timber and the acoustic absorption of the plaster in the courtyards ensure the comfort of this tempered intermediate space.
