Challenging the Urban Grid: Collective Housing and the New Domestic Aesthetic

In 2022, the European Collective Housing Awards honored Barcelona’s La Borda, a cooperative housing scheme by Lacol architecture cooperative that houses 28 families in timber-framed structures. Designed for residents priced out of conventional markets, La Borda eliminates private car parking for shared bike storage and replaces energy-intensive concrete with cross-laminated timber. This project serves as a model for ecologically conscious urban housing, winning the 'Innovation' category for its ambitious collective governance model.

Awards jury chair Carme Pinós praised La Borda for its "radical rethinking of housing as a process rather than product." In this process, residents co-design and co-finance their homes, a rarity in European urban centers dominated by speculative developers. This participatory design and material innovation make La Borda emblematic of a shift from speculative urbanism to what Saskia Sassen calls "urban repair."

Across the Atlantic, Chile's Mirador House by Gonzalo Mardones Arquitectos offers a visual and functional counterpoint. Perched on the Pacific coastline near Santiago, the house utilizes its remote location for visual impact while adhering to a strong environmental ethos. The "mirador"—a traditional Spanish-American feature for observing landscapes—guides the design: the house integrates solar panels, rainwater harvesting, and a thermal envelope to minimize energy consumption. These solutions are essential to Chile's climate adaptation needs. The project received the 2023 Green Architecture Prize from the Chilean College of Architects.

The contrast between La Borda’s communal density and Mirador House's individualized seclusion critiques conventional housing paradigms. Both reject the high-rise typology synonymous with urban expansion. Instead, they embrace mid-rise or low-rise forms that foster stronger ties between inhabitants and their environments. Scholar Richard Sennett argues in Building and Dwelling: Ethics for the City (2018) that the "open city" fosters resilience. Both projects cultivate spaces of porous interaction, albeit on vastly different scales.

Yet challenges persist. La Borda's economic viability relies heavily on public subsidies and residents’ willingness to forgo traditional ownership models. Without systemic policy shifts, such projects may remain niche. Similarly, Mirador House, despite its environmental ingenuity, is affordable only to a narrow economic demographic. Its innovations need scaling to address the housing crisis in urban and peri-urban Chile.

Initiatives like the European Collective Housing Awards, launched in 2016, and the focus on green architecture in Chile signal an emerging consensus: architecture must serve social good, as Shigeru Ban suggests. Ban’s works, including his Paper Partition System for emergency housing, emphasize the urgency of scalable, sustainable design amid economic precarity and climate crisis.

Could this momentum redefine housing on a mass scale? Danish practice BIG’s Dortheavej Residence in Copenhagen suggests it might. Completed in 2018, the affordable housing block uses prefabricated timber modules arranged in a checkerboard pattern, allowing light and air to permeate each unit. Its success stems from a partnership with housing cooperative Lejerbo, ensuring rents remain below market rates. Dortheavej demonstrates the feasibility of merging design innovation with affordability, a model that could inform future urban housing policies.

However, scaling such innovations requires confronting entrenched systems. Architect Alejandro Aravena, winner of the 2016 Pritzker Prize, states, "Good design is not a matter of budget but of priorities." His firm's Quinta Monroy project in Iquique, Chile, delivered expandable homes to low-income families by allocating resources to structures and services rather than finished interiors. Like La Borda, Quinta Monroy turns financial constraints into creative parameters, though its success relied on state support.

The tension between public intervention and private enterprise raises a critical question: can architectural innovation alone address urban housing crises, or must it partner with systemic policy reforms? Without the latter, projects like La Borda and Dortheavej may remain outliers in landscapes dominated by speculative high-rises and gated communities.

These examples illustrate an evolving ethos in contemporary architecture. They challenge the primacy of the individual unit, foregrounding the collective, adaptable, and sustainable. From Barcelona to Santiago, architects are redefining urban living, moving away from housing as a commodity toward housing as a commons. Whether these ideas can shift the dominant logic of urban development remains uncertain, but they represent a significant step in reframing the narrative of housing crises.