Cooperative housing with flexible typology. "La Chalmeta" by Pau Vidal and Vivas Arquitectos

Description of project by Pau Vidal and Vivas Arquitectos

The project was initiated as a result of a public call by the Barcelona City Council for the transfer of the use of the site located in the Marina del Prat Vermell neighborhood, classified as VPO with surface rights in favor of housing cooperatives for a minimum of 75 years. The self-promotion and subsequent collective management by the cooperative Llar Jove Marina Prat Vermell SCCL have involved the participation of the 32 residents in the process (design, construction, and use), generating the opportunity to learn about and jointly plan their specific needs, with a commitment to the community dimension as one of the main values.

The volumetric design defines the alignment to roads and two heights of 4 and 8 floors. The building resolves the corner by emptying the center of the volume, generating two bars of different heights with four courtyards between them. On each floor, the access walkway to the flats is formalized in a single longitudinal axis that connects with the staircase and lifts core. These walkways foster relationships and become a transition space between the community and the housing. At an intermediate point along this route, the roof of the lower building functions as a communal garden terrace and provides the building with quality green space. The ground floor is accessed from Ulldecona street, through an exterior passage that connects with the public space inside the block through a courtyard for parking bicycles. The premises for use by the cooperative occupy the rest of the spaces on the ground floor, housing a multi-purpose community space, a kitchen-dining room and living room for groups, a coworking space, a laundry, a treatment room and a food distribution space that is also a consumer cooperative (commissary), all of them around the two courtyards that reach the ground floor.


"La Chalmeta" by Pau Vidal and Vivas Arquitectos. Photograph by José Hevia.

The dwelling is understood as a grouping of non-hierarchical spaces. The layout of an organizing mesh where all the spaces start from a homogeneous dimension configures the pattern for filling or emptying the building, grouping on both sides of the walkway and adopting different housing typologies of 1, 2, and 3 rooms depending on the number of modules used. Inside the dwellings, the modular spaces follow one after the other from the entrance to the street façade. Grouping, communicating, or closing the pieces are the options of use that this flexible typology allows. All the dwellings have cross ventilation through the interior courtyards, which in turn will allow light and sunlight from the south to enter the interior of the building.

The project incorporates a series of bio-construction, healthy design, and energy efficiency criteria, including connection to the Ecoenergías urban generation and distribution network (Marina power station, biomass plant) for heating and domestic hot water.