GREENH@USE 140 Social Housing in 22@ BCN

The Greenh@use project, located in Barcelona’s 22@ on a block crossed by an old passage, comprises 140 social housing units and 15 temporary accommodations with senior, intergenerational, and rental programs. Organized around patios and a bioclimatic atrium, daylight, and community life. The building engages with Cerdà’s grid through its chamfer and passage, while re-naturalizing the surroundings with vegetation. Its prefabricated exposed-concrete structure optimizes resources, reduces CO₂, and provides thermal inertia, combining sustainability, construction efficiency, and urban cohesion.

The project tackled the challenge of inserting a dense residential volume into Barcelona’s 22@. Conceived as a mixed-use social housing complex, it integrates diverse programs: temporary accommodation for vulnerable groups, social rental units, and housing for seniors. Each program maintains independence yet shares a system of patios and a large bioclimatic atrium that regulates thermal comfort through passive and thermodynamic strategies. This common structure also acts as a social condenser, fostering interaction and community life. Collective spaces in the chamfer and on the roof—gyms, meeting rooms, laundries, and urban gardens—were designed to encourage socialization and intergenerational solidarity. Typological flexibility enabled the development of adaptable, intergenerational dwellings. An optimized prefabricated concrete structure reduced CO₂ emissions while providing speed, thermal inertia, and constructive efficiency, reconciling sustainability, residential quality.

The 15,000 m² building required floor-by-floor sectorization, making a lightweight system unfeasible. A prefabricated exposed-concrete system was chosen to meet the project’s scale, reduce environmental impact, and provide thermodynamic performance. Ribbed Pi slabs and lightened precast slabs cut concrete volume by 50%, lowering CO₂ emissions and ensuring constructive efficiency. The hyperstatic solution turned prefabricated elements into a monolithic structure, optimizing sections and improving thermal inertia for passive comfort. Exposed concrete eliminated unnecessary finishes, reducing costs and simplifying maintenance to periodic checks of joints and reinforcements. Wooden lattices and climbing vegetation complemented the façade, adding warmth and re-naturalization. The result is an honest, robust, and sustainable structural system designed for long-term efficiency, ease of conservation, and resilience.