Work is under way on a building with 83 homes for the elderly, to be built on the site of the former Quirón clinic in Av. Mare de Déu de Montserrat, in the district of Gràcia. The building will have floor space of over 11,000 square metres and include communal spaces such as a centre for the elderly, a community centre, a young people’s centre and an auditorium.
The building is a pioneering block as it combines housing for the elderly with another section with accommodation for highly dependent senior citizens and seeks to cover ongoing support and adapted housing needs as a pilot project, an alternative to current homes for the elderly and conceived for new generations of senior citizens.
The design process involved local residents’ organisations, with a participatory process to decide what type of spaces they needed, as there is a real shortfall in community facilities in the neighbourhood of La Salut.
With an anticipated investment of 13.1 million euros, the architectural solution uses the ground floor for the different spaces for local people and the two access points for housing. The design also takes into account energy efficiency, as the homes and accommodation have exterior façades giving onto the street and interior façades giving onto an inner quadrangle to ensure cross-ventilation.