This afternoon saw the Cooperativa Sostre Cívic hand over the keys to 32 flats in Pla dels Cirerers, the fifth cooperative housing project now in use in the city. At eight floors, the block is tallest wooden building in the Spanish state. It is located on a site which the City Council granted the cooperative the use of for 75 years through a public competition.
The block consists of 32 homes with shared spaces such as a library, a collective storage room, bike parking, a communal kitchen, a multi-purpose hall, a tool room, a cultivation patch, a rooftop, various terraces, laundry spaces on each floor and a workshop.
The block in Pla dels Cirerers is the fifth cooperative housing project up and running in the city, following the ones in C/ Princesa (Ciutat Vella), La Borda, in Can Batlló (Sants-Montjuïc), La Balma, in Poblenou (Sant Martí) and La Chalmeta, in La Marina (Sants-Montjuïc).
In all, there are now 114 flats in cooperative housing communities, operating as self-managed coexistence projects based on models to foster cooperation and mutual support between those in the cooperative. A further 14 projects are planned and are currently at different stages, between them representing another 399 cooperative homes.