EUmies Awards 2022

Lacol is a cooperative of architects set up in 2009 in Sants (Barcelona), working with architecture for eco-social transformation as a tool to critically intervene in the immediate environment. The process of La Borda began in 2012, when a group of neighbours decided to self-organize to collectively solve the need for access to housing. This small group started the implementation of a housing cooperative based on the right of use. The cooperative is the owner of the building, built on a site of public ownership, and assigns the right to use the housing to its members.

In this model of alternative ownership opposed to private property, the value is solely put in the use of the house instead of its exchange value in the market, which avoids speculative uses. The whole process is based on a bottom-up approach and allows future users to participate. Lacol introduced five characteristics into the development process: self-promotion, right of use, community life, sustainability and affordability. These coordinates also sustain the replicability of the model in other projects. The future inhabitants participate in the collaborative design through thematic workshops making them co-responsible users.

La Borda promotes community-friendly forms of coexistence that enhance the interrelation between people living together through community spaces and establish cooperative links in the field of domestic work and care by making the private spheres of everyday life visible. The communal space (300 square metres) is situated in the semi-exterior space around the inner courtyard and consists of kitchen-dining, laundry, guest rooms, health rooms, storage etc. From there, also the private apartments are accessed. The energy concept is based on optimising processes, renouncing underground car parking, grouping of services and reduction of the house’s surface as well as the use of a biomass boiler for heating. The structure of the six floors was created using Cross Laminated Timber wood (CLT), a lightweight, high-quality, renewable material that allows the closure of cycles. La Borda is currently the highest building using wood structure constructed in Spain.

The 2022 Emerging Architecture Winner is the La Borda cooperative housing by Lacol in Barcelona.

This cooperative project is transgressive in its context because although housing production is mainly dominated by macroeconomic interests, in this case, the model is based on co-ownership and co-management of shared resources and capacities. The model goes beyond the specific project of cooperative housing: the studio is also run as a cooperative where fourteen professionals with different expertise offer a role model and an active tool for promoting political and urban change from within the system, based on social, ecological and economic sustainability.