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La Balma we are the first project that started work among all awarded on municipal land in the 2016 Barcelona City Council competition.
We are a heterogeneous and intergenerational group, from babies to people in their sixties and with very diverse family types. We form a group of around thirty people grouped in 20 coexistence units. We find single-parent families, couples, couples with children, cohabiting adults and individual units (from young people to people who are currently retired). This diversity of the group is the wealth to face the project of community life. A few people from the motor group have always lived in the Poblenou neighborhood, work there or have a direct relationship there.
In order to live there, each cohabitation unit has had to make a returnable initial capital contribution that ranges between €28.000 and €38.000. Monthly fees, which include services and supplies, range from €512 to €800 per home.
PARTICIPATIVE PROCESS
One of the greatest singularities and potentials of the cooperative housing model is the involvement as future users in an active way in the development of the different phases of the promotion process: creation of a social organization, decision-making in a collective way class, co-design, etc. They are democratic processes of self-organization and cooperation where the partners take a central role. In this sense, participative management of both the process and its result is of great importance.
Our group took shape between the months of September and October 2016. As part of the FESC of the same year was expanded and strengthened from the workshops promoted and facilitated by the team of Sostre Cívic, where we agreed with the desire to be part of the group to opt for the Poblenou site in the Barcelona City Council competition.
Since then, we have the support of technical teams specialized in tasks that we cannot undertake independently. For example, in the architectural project we had the collaboration of LaCol and LaBoqueria, teams specialized in dynamizing participation processes in the field of architecture and cooperative housing.
Based on participatory dynamics, we defined the uses of community spaces according to our current needs and concerns. We rethought the collective housing we live in to adapt it to the lifestyle we imagine!
THE NEIGHBORHOOD COMMUNITY PROJECT
We want to promote more communal forms of coexistence, which enhance the interrelationship between the people who live in the building and also with the neighborhood and people outside the cooperative, and manage to build a building that needs its environment.
Thus, we have carried out a pioneering social inclusion project in the Catalan cooperative housing movement: one of the homes is intended for two young people who have been fostered, thanks to a joint program with Reference Point, an organization that works to promote the emancipation of this young person in a vulnerable situation, and financed by the Free Project (Coop57, Òmnium Cultural and ECAS). In addition, these young people participated in the entire design process of the project and participate in the democratic management of the building.
We also want to encourage more communal forms of coexistence, sharing a premises on the ground floor with the people and associations of the neighborhood and carrying out different projects to improve the quality of life of the people in the area.
THE ARCHITECTURAL PROJECT
We have flexible and multipurpose spaces that evolve with the group depending on the changes in both the living units and the people who will inhabit the building: incorporation of new members, births, growth processes of children-adolescents, processes of aging adults…
Thus, the typologies start from a basic module of 50m2 and from the annexation of habitable units of 16m2 (considered common space for private use in legal terms) allow the homes to grow and decrease. These pieces are given by the cooperative to the family units that need them at any time, therefore, it becomes a mechanism to manage changes as an alternative to rotation. This proposal is viable due to the fact that the management of the building is the responsibility of the community itself.
The homes reduce their surface area (5-10%) to share services such as the laundry, the study, guest rooms or storage rooms, thus allowing the collectivization not to involve an additional cost, but the opposite, a saving and an increase in surface area and quality of life.
The architectural project has 225m2 of interior space intended for community spaces, plus semi-outdoor and outdoor areas, where we find the following uses: Living room - dining room, multipurpose room, library and work space, a laundry per floor, connected health and care space with auxiliary rooms, guest rooms, common and individual plant storage, equipped deck and outdoor living area, bicycle parking, tool room and workshop area.
We worked on the project with environmental criteria to achieve a passive building that is a refuge from energy poverty. This awareness extends to the mobility and consumption model. On the one hand, we promote the spaces for bicycles and the debate on the need for the car and the construction of the car park. On the other hand, we are committed to ecological consumption by linking the cooperative with local consumer cooperatives and by self-production with roof gardens.
Waste management (with specific spaces on the ground floor) and the desire to close the water cycle with the natural environment (return of rainwater to the subsoil and wells for water supply for irrigation and non-consumptive potable) are direct actions that add to all the previous ones to reduce the ecological footprint and environmental impact of the community.
CO-EXISTENCE AT LA BALMA
The afternoon of July 15 2021 we received the keys to our homes in an event in front of our building where all the entities, administrations and companies of the social and solidarity economy that have made the project possible participated.
Tribe, roots, heat, community, light, seed... there are many and very different meanings that La Balma has for us and with which we filled a tree of words that Thursday the 15th, a tree that still adorns the main common room of the building. Now, with the individual nests ready, we begin to fill the common spaces with life little by little...
It is a model of coexistence that we have chosen to break with hyper-individualism and respectfully combine intimacy and community. It is a new way of living that represents a before and after for all of us:
"An incredible joy inside. It has exceeded everything I had imagined.”
"It is intimacy, community and network. It makes me feel very safe.”
"I lived alone and thought I was fine, now I'm much better."
DO YOU WANT TO LIVE IN LA BALMA?
La Balma it is currently full and has no vacancies. If the project is canceled at any time, all members of the cooperative will be notified. We remind you that the main criterion when transferring the right to assign the use of a home is theseniority order a Sostre Cívic, as contained in article 14 of our statutes. If you are not yet a member, you can do so fromthis page!
And if you want to contact us with any questions or comments, you can write to us at info@labalma.sostrecivic.cat
The lot where the project is being built La Balma is a municipal lot, ceded by Barcelona City Council in 2017.
