Intergenerational Social Housing

Jordi Costa — Thu, 20 Feb 2025 06:05:25 +0000

Architects: Emiliano López and Mónica Rivera Photography: José Hevia Construction Period: 2024 Location: Esporles, Spain

The project for the Balearic Institute of Housing (IBAVI) is integrated into its urban context, continuing the series of houses with gabled roofs that are arranged in a descending sequence along the streets perpendicular to the Esporles stream, in the municipality of the Mallorcan Sierra de Tramontana. With a constructed area of 1,128 square meters, the set of social housing consists of two volumes that embrace a tree-filled interior patio, which acts as a solar collector in winter and features an open balcony protected from the sun in summer. The main volume, parallel to Ca l’Onclo street, houses eighteen through apartments distributed over three floors, oriented southeast-northwest. The second volume accommodates auxiliary programs: access, vertical communication core, technical installations, concierge, and community spaces (a multipurpose room, a dining room, and a kitchen).

To the north, the construction is compact with thick load-bearing walls where the mass predominates over the openings. In the southern interior patio, there is a porticoed structure providing access to the apartments. The proposal adopts the necessary measures, both in its construction and use, to achieve the 100% reduction in emissions required by Law 7/2021 on climate change and energy transition for future constructions to be carried out from 2050 onwards.

All the apartments are oriented following the direction of the Esporles torrent, which marks the prevailing winds that cross the Sierra de Tramontana. The north facade is dissipative and energy-conserving through a double wall of thermal clay. The south facade is a collector and works with inertia and the glazed gallery. With the proper functioning of the bioclimatic elements, the demand for heating and cooling for the building as a whole is null. Active climate control systems are not required due to the high interior inertia of the apartments, achieving temperature differences of up to 20 degrees between the interior and exterior of the apartment in winter.

Text provided by the architects.

La entrada Intergenerational Social Housing se publicó primero en Global Spaces.

Two Cork Houses

Jordi Costa — Wed, 22 Feb 2023 06:56:58 +0000

Architects: Emiliano López and Mónica Rivera Photography: José Hevia Construction Period: 2016 Location: Palafrugell, Spain

The houses are on a plot densely populated by tall, slender pines, cork trees, and holm oaks in Plafrugell, a part of the Costa Brava where cork was formerly produced.

The houses emerge from an uneven and steep terrain that has been modified as little as possible. Permeable gravel pavements have been introduced and the existing vegetation has been preserved and enhanced with new Mediterranean plantings, giving the impression of a place hardly changed after the intervention.

The structural base is in concrete and supports the cross-laminated timber structure above (produced in the Basque Country). All is clad on the outside by two layers of insulating cork

Inside the houses, the structural wood is left exposed, resulting in an atmosphere that is closer to the surrounding woodland than to the sea five hundred meters away.

The use of cork as a material for finishing the façades supports its environmental adaptability in a wooded landscape dominated by the presence of cork trees.

Intimate in scale, the indoor spaces are linked to one another without passageways in a sequence of rooms of varying size, their uses being defined by their relationship to the outside, be it the distant view of the sea, the vision of the tops of the pines or the direct means of access to the terrain.

The main floor of the larger house is extended via a free-standing sandblasted concrete canopy which forms two ample terraces —suspended among the pines— with views of the sea and the coastal mountain range.

Both houses obtained a Class A energy rating (highest achievable by Spanish standards) with an annual energy consumption of 41.44 and 46.22 kWh/m2 and emissions of 7.04 and 7.88 kg of CO2/m2 a year.

Text provided by the architect.

La entrada Two Cork Houses se publicó primero en Global Spaces.

Emiliano López and Mónica Rivera archivos - Global Spaces

Intergenerational Social Housing

Two Cork Houses