Work is under way on a block of 31 officially protected homes with social rents in Nou Barris. Located at Av. Escolapi Càncer, 27-33, the block will provide housing for some ninety people.

The ceremony to lay the first stone was attended by Xavier Marcé, District Councillor for Nou Barris, Lucía Martín, Councillor for Housing and Renovation, Mari Carmen Rodríguez González and Ramon Ferrer Hernández, representing the Torre Baró residents’ association, Josep Montiel Mora, representing Els Eucaliptus residents’ association, and Gregoria Garcia from the elderly people’s centre in Torre Baró.

Work is due to be completed during the first quarter of 2023 and involves a municipal investment of 4,047,778 euros (plus VAT). The project corresponds to the municipal government strategy of recent years to boost the construction of publicly protected housing in the city.

The geography of Torre Baró, with its steep slopes, is one of the factors which shapes the character of the building. Designed through a joint venture between Alday Jover Arquitectes, SLP, and Burgos&Garrido Arquitectos Asociados, the block adopts a clear geometry of a cube embedded in a significant slope, facing north. This geometric figure has been emptied, with an inner courtyard which opens to the south, against the slope of the mountain, directly searching for the sun and giving access to all the homes. Access to the building is via a large porch giving onto Av. Escolapi Càncer, which is the main street in the new urban development in Torre Baró. The second floor of the block connects with C/ Castelldefels, where there is a second entrance to the building.

The project will generate 31 homes and some commercial premises, with six floors in all. The ground floor will house the commercial premises and a large porch, with a semi-underground area for service rooms, a section behind the premises, space for keeping bicycles and a space for general waste.

The homes will have a usable floor space of between 65 and 80 square metres, with fourteen three-bedroom flats, sixteen two-bedroom flats and one flat with a single bedroom. Two of the homes will also be adapted for people with reduced mobility.

The homes will be distributed from the first to the fifth floor: five on the first floor, six on the second and third, and seven on the fourth and fifth floors. The building will also feature an inner courtyard and seventeen separate storage rooms for the one and two-bedroom flats. The rooftop will house the telecommunications structure, the antenna, a lightning conductor, solar panelling, a cleaning room and smoke and ventilation outflow ducts.

More public housing developments

Besides this project, there are currently two other protected public housing developments in progress in Nou Barris. One is a block of 47 homes with services, also in Torre Baró and due for completion in the second half of 2022, and the other is a cohousing project by the Sostre Cívic cooperative, for 29 homes in C/ Pla dels Cirerers, due for completion at the end of this year.

In addition, work is due to start this year on three more housing projects in Trinitat Nova, providing a total of 246 homes for rent or with the lease purchases. In all, the protected public housing pool in the district of Nou Barris is set to gain 353 more homes, providing housing for some 880 people.

Besides the new buildings, Barcelona City Council is also increasing the public housing pool by purchasing private flats to offer with affordable rents. The City Council has acquired 184 homes in Nou Barris since 2015, also attracting 323 private homes through programmes to provide housing with social and affordable rents. In all, purchased flats and private homes put to use in this way represent housing for over 1,200 people.