Urban Planning, Ecological Transition, Urban Services and Housing

Work has started on the four public housing buildings that will make of the Glòries block, the largest project of this type being promoted by a municipal council in the Spanish state. The block will have 238 flats in all, awarded with rents or through a leasehold system and providing homes for at least 800 people. Municipal investment in this project will be 44 million euros, with work to take 30 months.

The development is located on a site delimited by Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, Pl. Glories and Carrer dels Encants Vells. The development will have two building of six and seven floors, facing L’Eixample, and a further two of nine and ten floors facing Glòries.

The first three floors of the blocks will be joined, leaving an open space on the ground floor which will extend the pedestrian route from Diagonal to Encants. There will also be two inner yards for residents to use, which could act as meeting places, with children’s games, bike parking and more. Besides technical installations the rooftops will also offer areas for people to make use of.

A notable aspect to this project is the strategy to reduce the environmental impact, using wood in the structure of one of the blocks, and also to reduce the energy demand for heating and refrigeration, through passive measures. The buildings will also have green rooftops, mechanisms for reusing grey water and solar panelling to generate renewable energy.

In all, 238 homes will be built, 125 of them as rental properties and 113 with leaseholds, two formulas that guarantee that the land will always remain publicly owned. The flats will have one, two or three bedrooms, and eleven of them will be adapted for people with reduced mobility.

All the homes are to be built taking into account the gender perspective, with any type of hierarchy in the distribution of space to disappear, adapting the flats to new models of families and households. Kitchens, bathrooms and utility rooms will have the same natural light and ventilation as the main spaces in the home, such as living rooms and bedrooms.

Glòries as a centre for public housing

Glòries and its environs, an area in transformation which will include a large green park and infrastructures such as the tram system and the road tunnels, is one of the most important centres for public housing in the city. Between the projects completed and those in progress, Glòries will have 470 publicly owned homes in all.

Besides the Glòries block, the keys have already been handed over for 105 homes with services for the elderly in C/ Ciutat de Granada, and work is also due to be completed this summer on some APROP provisional homes, providing 42 more flats with social rents. In addition, a plot of land in C/ Bolívia will shortly be assigned to a foundation or housing cooperative to build and manage a block of 85 flats with affordable social rents.