Soste Cívic, with the collaboration of the College of Architects, ha resolved the competition started last October 4 to choose the team of architects who will develop the first senior cooperative housing on public land in Catalonia.

The winning team is Peris-Toral. The jury of the competition has highlighted its risky typological proposal, at the same time rational, which answers all the requirements of the bases providing the maximum usable surface and spatial feeling. However, as in all participatory projects of Sostre Cívic, the final design of the project will be specified collaboratively with the users of Can 70.

The competition, step by step

This is the first contest of ideas that drives Sostre Cívic, and that is why we wanted to count on the collaboration of the College of Architects (COAC). The COAC has made available to the entity its pool of experts for architectural juries, through which we were able to count on the participation of Neus Lacomba, architect of the promotion of 96 Housing for the Third Age Reina Amàlia, project awarded at the Mostra d'Arquitectura Catalana and the Mies Van der Rohe Awards.

The Ideas Competition is part of a new protocol for the election of the architectural teams of the cooperative, created that with the aim of providing transparency, equity and solvency in the recruitment of our suppliers.

The Competition process started with the selection of three architecture teams among the 49 companies accredited to the Exchange of suppliers of Sostre Cívic. This selection was carried out based on a series of criteria/filters that are automatically applied to the Stock Exchange, and which have mainly been related to the experience in residential architecture for the elderly. These three selected teams, Peris-Toral, Paul Vidal i BTA – Marc Trepat, were the participants in the failed Ideas contest last November 10.

Together with the architect Neus Lacomba, the jury of the ideas competition had the participation of architects who are members of the technical team and of the Governing Council of the cooperative, and of two of the user-partners of the project of Can 70.

The deliberation of the jury was carried out in two parts, one of analysis and individual study, and another of joint debate of all the people of the jury. Then the scores were established in a democratic way and taking into account the opinion of all the people on the jury, from the technical side and the users.

A low-impact proposal that takes advantage of the space

In general terms, all three projects consistently resolved all aspects of the architectural project, despite this, in the deliberation, and consequently in the scoring, the Peris-Toral project was slightly highlighted for its proposal of spatial work in the configuration typological, and for its response to the urban environment in the treatment of the facades, and especially the testers.

The typological approach and grouping of Peris-Toral's homes was particularly valued for its spatial work of concatenating spaces diagonally, from the home to the vertical core passing through the collective space. In this sense, he highlighted the use of space and the effective surface for socialization around the communication core on all floors. 

Can 70 it can be realized in 2023

Can 70 was born in 2015, when a group of partners (mostly women) between the ages of 55 and 70 came together with the aim of starting a cooperative senior housing project in the city of Barcelona. 

Since then they have been working and debating on their coexistence model, thinking together about how they want to live and age in community, autonomously and healthily in an environment that promotes personal and collective growth, mutual help and care according to the needs of each one. The result of this work is, for example, the sixth guide in our "We build cooperative housing" collection, about care in the coexistence of elderly people.

Seven years after his birth, in May 2021, the Barcelona City Council assigned 12 lots and buildings to be rehabilitated by the municipality for different social housing entities and housing cooperatives to promote the construction of more than 370 flats. On the web housing.social/barcelona more information is provided on the agreement that facilitated this transfer, and the control criteria and public guarantees that ensure the general interest in the awarding of projects are explained in detail. And two of these lots will be to finally realize the project of Can 70!

Once the assignment of the land has been formalized and the project finalized, it is expected that the works on the assigned lot can begin at the end of 2022. Can 70 will thus become the first senior cooperative housing in Barcelona and the first on public land in Catalonia and the state.