Social Housing Barcelona, Glories - Esteve Bonell, Josep Maria Gil, Marta Peris, Jose Manuel Toral
Reportage about collective residential projects realised by the Patronat Municipal de l'Habitatge de Barcelona (PMHB) in the last years.
photo (Stefano Ferrando) and text (Francesco Cocco) from Social Housing Barcelona, ListLab, 2019
The vivienda dotacional with services for the elderly of Glories is part of a housing program promoted by the municipality of Barcelona which includes the construction of 225 apartments with social tenancy and surface rights for people under vulnerable housing conditions. The building consists of a ground floor with public spaces (mental health centre, primary healthcare (CAP) and a civic centre for the district) and three buildings for housing purposes, where the apartments for the elderly and shared spaces are located. Each building features a
maximum of eight apartments, distributed throughout the different floors through a central corridor that changes its section at the end, and expands in order to give access to a big communal terrace linking the three buildings on the first floor.
On the upper terrace of each building, there is a space for communal laundry and a place to hang dry the wash, a solarium and an area for an urban vegetable garden for the elderly. Private spaces consist of 40 m2 apartments displayed around a central core where the bathroom is located. This solution allows the residents to move, thanks to the sliding doors inside each apartment, in a circular way without barriers around the accommodation, making maximum use of the available space.
This complex has been selected among the 40 most interesting works of the year 2017 according to the international architectural prize of the Mies Van der Rohe Foundation.
