One of the biggest current challenges in large cities is the housing crisis and the lack of efficient solutions to mitigate its effects on citizens. This problem is exacerbated in cities where tourism and vacation or temporary housing dominate the market, distancing residents from the possibility of accessing affordable urban housing. Furthermore, gentrification, driven by rising rents and real estate speculation, contributes to the displacement of local communities, transforming traditional neighborhoods into areas exclusively oriented toward tourist consumption.
Barcelona has been one of the pioneering cities in addressing this issue, being the Spanish city that receives the highest number of foreign tourists annually. To tackle this challenge, the city has implemented a series of regulations and policies, such as limiting the number of licenses for tourist apartments and promoting alternative housing models, like the use of cooperatives.
Architecture can be part of the solution, and this is what Lacol, a cooperative of architects established in 2009 in the Sants neighborhood of Barcelona, proposes. Their work focuses on generating community infrastructures for the sustainability of life, considering them a key tool for the ecosocial transition through architecture, cooperation, and participation.
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Reimagining Models for Living Together: 4 Projects Showcasing Cooperative ArchitectureThe model proposed by Lacol is based on designing and building cooperative housing as a community response to a collective problem. In other words, they propose a new way of living in a community, based on three fundamental pillars: 1) collective housing and the redefinition of both private and public spaces, fostering neighborly encounters and exchanges; 2) sustainability, ensuring environmental quality from the building's construction and throughout its entire lifespan, contributing to minimizing energy costs; and 3) the active participation of end users from the project's inception, so they can continue to manage the space consciously.
For us, this last point is one of the main vectors guiding our designs. We understand sustainability primarily through the involvement of residents, seeking to reduce demand and consumption of energy and materials, both during the conception and use of the building.
In conversation with the Lacol team, we reviewed the model and their working methodology while taking a tour of their most recent projects: La Borda Building and the cooperative housing La Balma, designed in collaboration with Laboquería.
ArchDaily (Paula Pintos) What are the biggest problems you identify within the housing crisis in large cities, particularly in Barcelona? How should architecture contribute to solving this crisis?
Lacol: The biggest problem we see, especially in large cities like Barcelona, is that housing is treated as a speculative asset and a financial product, or even put at the service of tourism. The only solution is to understand housing as a right, focusing on its use value, not its exchange value. Architecture can be a tool serving speculation —creating more exclusive housing, aimed at a few privileged individuals or maximizing capital gains— or it can serve the right to housing, seeking ways to create more affordable, sustainable, and inclusive homes.
AD: How did the first cooperative housing projects emerge, transforming the traditional collective housing model?
In the case of La Borda, it was a response from Can Batlló, a self-managed space since 2011, to the housing crisis. Cooperative housing in use concession had been studied for years in Catalonia, with some successful cases, although on private land in rural areas. The biggest challenge was to implement it on urban land designated for social housing.
AD: What is Lacol's model? What solutions arise from architecture?
We are interested in cooperative housing because it is a community response to a collective problem —access to housing— even though we have been led to believe that the solution can only be individual, through purchase or rental. Community management of collective housing allows architectural solutions to emerge that would be difficult to implement otherwise. You can't think of a community kitchen without a social structure backing it up.
AD: What is the structure of the team, and particularly the role of the architect? What are the work processes like?
We try to work in the most horizontal way possible. Although one or two people manage a project, there are many moments of collaborative creation among the Lacol members. In the end, the project is signed collectively, so everyone must feel represented. We also like our projects to be as participatory as possible. In the case of cooperative housing, we feel very comfortable because we have a stable group we work with from the beginning, often from the search for the plot or building and defining the project's basic needs.
AD: What are the biggest benefits of this methodology and consequently, the lifestyle in collective housing?
The result is housing that is more adapted to the real needs of the people who will inhabit it, without following market logics or the preconceived ideas that have been imposed on us. This is leading us to see results with more shared spaces, adaptable housing over time, and other forms of coexistence.
This article is part of the ArchDaily Topics: Designing for the Common Good. Every month we explore a topic in-depth through articles, interviews, news, and architecture projects. We invite you to learn more about our ArchDaily Topics. And, as always, at ArchDaily we welcome the contributions of our readers; if you want to submit an article or project, contact us.
