Affordable housing doesn’t have to be ugly

Affordable housing is often associated with drab housing blocs and brutalist towers — but it doesn’t have to be.

Picture courtesy of IBAVI

This article is part of The Home Front, a special European housing report from POLITICO’s Global Policy Lab: Living Cities. Sign up here.

Monotonous brutalist tower blocks. Drab, uninspired council estates.

For too long, any mention of affordable or social housing evoked images of properties where no one would actually want to live. But a growing push across Europe is putting aesthetics at the heart of such properties once again — ensuring that homes are both affordable and beautiful.

Many of the architects who built Europe’s first affordable or social housing complexes made beauty a priority, Berlin-based architect and curator Ilka Ruby told POLITICO.

“The large-scale housing projects of the so-called Neues Bauen after the First World War by architects such as Ernst May, Bruno Taut, Alvar Aalto, J.J.P. OUD and many others were developed to create affordable and healthy housing for workers and people on low incomes,” she said, pointing out that some of their buildings are now recognized as UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

After World War II, however, there was a dire need for affordable housing, and authorities prioritized scale and repetition. Ruby said that in today’s extremely individualized society, the housing blocks of the 1950s and 1960s may seem ugly — but such judgments are often made because people see these buildings only from the outside.

“Whether a project is perceived as pleasant has to do with many factors: Is there a community, is the complex well maintained, are there amenities other than apartments, are there usable green spaces?” she asked. “It may turn out that the actual residents of these projects often enjoy living there.”

Ruby said there was once again greater attention paid to the aesthetic quality of affordable housing, but cautioned against evaluating it based on whether it looked “modern, artistic, chic, et cetera.”

“Instead, you focus on genuine architectural and urban qualities: Does the floorplan allow for different lifestyles and family models? What is the connection between indoor and outdoor space? Are there spaces and facilities for the community? Are there mobility concepts?” she said. “On these topics, there is still a lot of room for improvement in social housing construction.”

Here are three examples of affordable and social housing projects that have successfully combined form with function.

Cité du Grand Parc, Bordeaux

“This project proves how a social housing development that was considered ugly andthreatened with demolition can instead be turned into something beautiful,” Ruby said.

“The architects opened up the existing façade and added a layer of [3-meter] winter gardens and balconies. This gave the residents an additional space with an outdoor feeling that also serves as a thermal buffer to reduce heating costs.”

La Borda, Barcelona

Ruby pointed out that La Borda was “a project that was not developed by a social housing agency, but by the inhabitants themselves, who founded a housing cooperative to realize affordable housing.”

“It is an example [of] a series of self-empowered projects by newly founded co-ops that were built over the last decade,” she added. “The participatory planning process, the flexibility of spaces, the low-energy concept and the many collective spaces make it a great project on every level.”

Salvador Espriu, Palma de Mallorca

“This project is one of a series of experimental social housing projects undertaken by the Balearic Social Housing institute (IBAVI). All of these projects experiment with local materials and try out new methods and materials that can later be used in larger housing projects,” Ruby said.

“In the Salvador Espriu project, a stone from a local quarry is used for the walls and vaulted ceilings to reduce the use of concrete and imported wood,” she continued. “Not only does this significantly reduce the building’s CO2 emissions, but the thermal inertia of the material makes the building well-suited to the Mediterranean climate — and it looks very beautiful.”

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