The housing crisis, the need for effective land management policies, and the growing demand for housing aid are global challenges, and Spain has taken significant steps to address these issues in recent years. While this effort is closely tied to rehabilitating obsolete buildings, it also tackles the challenges of densification and gentrification. These factors have prompted the exploration of new housing models and ways of living, leading to the development of affordable residential buildings designed to accommodate large numbers of inhabitants while maintaining high-quality living standards.
These initiatives aim to address urgent housing needs by integrating energy-efficient designs with a focus on social and community cohesion. The goal is to ensure that daily living is not only sustainable but also fosters a sense of belonging and collective well-being. A defining feature of these housing projects is their use of modern typologies for apartment blocks, which accommodate many people while maintaining high-quality, environmentally sustainable spaces. What sets them apart is their respect for the plots and surrounding neighborhoods, resulting in a valuable contribution to the site.
The flexibility of the homes, a key characteristic of modern housing, is essential for adapting units to different living conditions, family structures, and uses. Below, we selected six outstanding examples of social housing projects in Spain that reflect these ideas. These projects not only embrace adaptability and sustainability but also demonstrate how innovative design can create vibrant, inclusive communities while addressing pressing housing needs. Read on to discover 6 social housing projects, along with excerpts from the project descriptions provided by the architects.
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Reimagining Models for Living Together: 4 Projects Showcasing Cooperative Architecture72 Social Housing Units at the Marina del Prat Vermell / MIAS Architects + Coll-Leclerc Arquitectos
To accommodate multiple social housing units, each with two rooms and optimal conditions for ventilation, solar exposure, typology, and views, we divided the triangular plot into five volumes, introducing two patios and two passages oriented precisely from north to south. The two corners, east and west, house unique dwellings. Rather than opting for a layout with an interior triangular block courtyard—which would be too small and create an excess of north-facing units—we proposed blocks with four corner dwellings, ensuring compliance with regulations that require two hours of solar exposure between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.
159 Social Housing Units in Madrid / TAAs arquitectos, Javier + Alia García Germán
The deep buildings are lit and ventilated by a public network of wind-catching patios, corridors, and social condensers which are connected to the plazas, and where most of the social interaction will take place. The morphology of this network has been designed to take on board Madrid's Northwestern nocturnal cool winds which have the potential to cool down any building. This network of spaces has been designed parametrically to ensure its climatic performance.
Social Housing 1737 / HARQUITECTES
As the plot provides good views and pleasant surroundings, an additive system generates the building and intensifies relations between the inhabited spaces and their environs. All rooms face outward, toward the landscape. At the same time, however, these rooms enclose a cloister-like central atrium where the services and circulations are concentrated, giving generous natural light and cross ventilation to all the spaces. The project shapes 3 continuous rings – terrace, program, and circulation – with the compact vertical communication cores placed inside the atrium to serve 4 dwellings per level. This layout yields 136 apartments. The central atrium, a sheltered and slightly tempered space, ventilates the stairwell, nuances the dwellings, and makes the residences more comfortable.
Social Housing in Ibiza / RipollTizon Estudio de Arquitectura
The aim is to escape from what the immediate surroundings represent and build a building whose identity is linked to the climate and way of life of the island, just like popular architecture does. We look at the Ibizan "payesa" houses as an example of architecture that responds to the place: white walls and controlled openings with sun protection, porches, and shaded spaces. Constructions that are perceived volumetrically as a sum of concatenated pavilions, due to their growth over time according to the spatial needs of those who inhabited them. This way of building by stacking, adding, and adding modules according to the programmatic needs of a house is taken as a reference and starting point for the development of the proposal.
The proposed system, strict in the laws that govern it, gives rise to a versatile typology of homes that allows the different units to adapt to the intended particular situations without giving up the standardization of solutions required by the development of social housing.
85 Social Dwellings in Cornellà / Peris+Toral.arquitectes
The building is organized around a courtyard that links a sequence of intermediate spaces. On the ground floor, a portico open to the city anticipates the doorway of the building and filters the relationship between public space and the communal courtyard that acts as a small plaza for the community. Instead of entering each of the building's hallways directly and independently from the outer façade, the four communication shafts are located in the four corners of the courtyard, so that all the inhabitants come together and meet in the courtyard plaza.
The size of the rooms, in addition to offering flexibility based on the ambiguity of use and functional indeterminacy, allows an optimal structural space for the wooden structure. As this is social housing, to ensure economic viability the volume of wood required has been optimized to 0.24 m3 per square meter of built area.
49 houses / Arquitectura Produccions + Pau Vidal + Vivas Arquitectos
On the ground and roof levels, there are common and outdoor spaces (multipurpose room, laundry, orchards, terraces, porches) that expand the way of living beyond the apartments, thus compensating for their reduced size.
