For a social housing project in north Dijon, the architect Sophie Delhay devised an ingenious building block system based on a quadratic grid, her main consideration being to provide the occupants neutral, identically-sized rooms without pre-assigned functions. As the basic module the architect chose a square room with 3,60 m sides, 13 m² of floor space and capable of being furnished for all conceivable room purposes.
La Borda by Lacol is Barcelona’s first cooperative housing building. Since residents moved into the 28 apartments in 2018, the building has won many international awards, including the Emerging Architect distinction of the Mies van der Rohe Award 2022.
Large European cities occasionally have the potential for internal urban development. In Paris’ 19th arrondissement, directly kitty-corner to the south entrance to the Parc de la Villette, an eight-storey parkade stood until recently in the block core on Avenue Jean-Jaurès. The architects from Encore Heureux have transformed the southern half of the parkade into 75 affordable condominiums for first-time buyers (logements d’accension).
“A raised jetty” is how the architects from the Love and Urbanism studio describe their new apartment house in southeast Berlin. The building is enhanced by an unusual combination of private balconies and exterior galleries.
This building with 72 rental flats stands in a residential and working district in Amsterdam. Its identity is determined by a grid of slender balcony railings and narrow concrete supports.
For this subsidized-apartment building in Strasbourg-Neuhof, whose exterior appears quite simple, Kuhn und Lehmann developed a split-level concept featuring various room heights that can be discerned from the chessboard-like facade.