La Balma
by Lacol
Barcelona, Spain
Project details
Year
2024
Project year
2021
Building area
2347,80 m²
Project website
Location
Team credits
Architects
- Lacol -
Arnau Andrés,
Eliseu Arrufat,
Ari Artigas,
Carles Baiges,
Lali Daví,
Cristina Gamboa,
Ernest Garriga,
Mirko Gegundez,
Laura Lluch,
Lluc Hernandez,
Pol Massoni,
Jordi Miró,
Anna Clemente.
Contributing partners
Laboqueria,
Societat Orgànica,
PAuS,
Arkenova,
La Constructiva.
commissioned by
Sostre Cívic SCCL
La Balma is an innovative housing cooperative project focused on non-speculative, affordable housing that engages residents and the community in its development. Designed as supportive infrastructure, it reduces material costs by 50 percent to combat energy poverty. The building opens to the neighbourhood, sharing spaces and fostering community encounters. The ground floor features a communal kitchen, bicycle storage, workshops and a commercial space leased to a local NGO, with no accommodations for cars.
The project consists of 20 flexible units, including a transitional floor for social integration. The various typologies offer diverse layouts, allowing residents to customize their living spaces. Each unit begins with a 50-m² base (small typology) and can be expanded with one (medium) or two (large) additional spaces, accommodating changes over time. This aligns with the cooperative’s emphasis on long-term community building.
Environmental strategies prioritize climatic comfort and energy efficiency, effectively reducing energy demands. The approach focuses on passive bioclimatic strategies that do not rely on high-tech components, instead promoting solutions that encourage active user participation in climate management. The building incorporates solar panels, geothermal heating, radiant clay panels and centralized systems, with infrastructure in place for future enhancements. The construction prioritizes bearing walls made of cross-laminated timber for the main structure, utilizing reinforced concrete only for the foundations and ground floor, thereby minimizing environmental impact while enhancing construction speed.
Established in 2009 in Barcelona’s Sants neighbourhood, Lacol is a cooperative of architects dedicated to creating community infrastructures for sustainable living. Through participatory design and cooperativism, Lacol actively engages residents in urban transformation, addressing citizen concerns, facilitating discussions on space usage, and promoting eco-social transitions.
Lacol’s projects emphasize the active involvement of neighbours and activists from the outset, tackling broader societal issues, particularly affordable housing, and reframing property ownership as a fundamental right. Community participation is central to housing cooperatives, empowering residents to take ownership of processes, fostering collective values, and strengthening the bond between architecture and culture. This approach balances individual desires with collective needs, enhancing collaboration and shaping the community’s ethos.
A distinct feature of Lacol’s initiatives is user involvement throughout all phases, from design to construction and management. This participation is crucial for defining environmental strategies and challenging existing standards. Reducing environmental impact often starts with rethinking project programmes, such as avoiding underground parking to save CO2, energy and resources, while promoting sustainable mobility.
Lacol prioritizes wood for structural elements and aims for net-zero energy consumption through passive bioclimatic strategies that allow residents to manage their climate actively. Austerity influences Lacol’s aesthetic choices, driven by economic constraints and a commitment to resource-consciousness. These decisions challenge cultural norms while simplifying construction processes for transparency, facilitating self-construction and maintenance.
Lacol critically reevaluates often-stigmatized materials, such as exposed wood and economically viable options. Projects like La Balma challenge conventional housing aesthetics, utilizing natural materials like wood and clay to promote sustainability and comfort, while the use of compressed earth blocks (CEBs) enhances indoor air quality and thermal comfort.
Indy Johar of Dark Matter Labs argues that if the EU’s carbon budget was entirely allocated to housing, it could produce 144,000 homes annually, while the demand is 1.45 million. The 2022 IPCC Mitigation Report reveals that efficiency gains are offset by rising floor areas. This leads to increased demand for resources. Yamina Saheb advocates for sufficiency, a framework to reduce resource consumption while ensuring wellbeing.
The prize money will be used to fund research that provides resources to help communities and professionals develop collective solutions within the sufficiency, efficiency and renewable (SER) framework, aiming to fully realize the decarbonization potential of the building stock. Outputs will include a multilingual publication available in print and PDF, alongside public presentations to disseminate knowledge and foster collective dialogue.
- Information for the project text was provided by Lacol -
Image gallery
Advisory Committee Statement
‘La Balma’ receives the award for Social Architecture for its innovative approach to residential architecture, emphasizing affordable and collective housing solutions amid the housing crisis currently faced by most cities around the world. Its activist stance and provision of non-speculative, affordable housing, actively involving residents and the community in its development, is praised. In this project social challenges are understood as inseparable from ecological and climate crises. Lacol’s dedication to inclusivity and sustainability sets a new standard in housing, at the same time reducing the inhabitants’ ecological footprint. The project functions like a vertical village with communal areas, promoting interaction and cooperative activities. It tackles both social and environmental vulnerabilities, making it a deserving recipient of the AAA Award for Social Architecture. Being constituted as a collective of architects and representatives of other fields, Lacol is an example of how the focus on social engagement often requires alternative ways for architectural agencies to be formed.