Entrepatios Las Carolinas
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Project Description
Entrepatios Las Carolinas is the first eco-social cooperative of right of use housing in Madrid. It's made up of a heterogeneous group of people with a common goal: to implement other ways of living in the city that do not allow real estate speculation, take into account environmental sustainability, create community and become an example of reappropriation of the commons for its inhabitants. The project has been designed collaboratively between its inhabitants and the sAtt architectural studio.
Geographical Scope
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Urban or rural issues
Physical or other transformations
EU Programme or fund
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Description of the project
Summary
Entrepatios Las Carolinas is the first right of use eco-social housing cooperative in Madrid. It consists of 17 complete homes and different common spaces: kitchen, dining room, terrace, patio, laundry, multifunctional room, bicycle workshop and parking, etc., and meets the highest environmental standards: design with Passivhaus criteria, CLT wood structure, sustainable materials, water saving system and photovoltaic energy production.
The right of use is a hybrid property system between rental and purchase that seeks an alternative to the traditional speculative real estate market. During the planning and construction of Entrepatios Las Carolinas, the traditional architect-user hierarchy that maximizes the private dimension -and the consequent atomization of individuals and family units- was inverted, and a voice was given to those who were to be its inhabitants.
With this model, the cooperative members, in continuous collaboration with the sAtt architecture studio, made active decisions during the co-design phase about what they wanted their home to be like, prioritizing the common over the private and redefining the concept of community, practically reviled in an individualistic context. Thus, the neighbors have found a way that allows them to live in a way that is consistent with their environmental, economic and social values. sAtt is the architecture studio that accompanied the community in the design process where, together, the building was structured according to the relationship between the private, the common and the public. Were the neighbors themselves who decided this relationship and the specific uses of each common or public space.
Currently, this cohousing is fully active and is inhabited by approximately 32 adults and 17 children who, in addition to sharing space and infrastructure, share a common life project.
Key objectives for sustainability
Las Carolinas was designed and evaluated taking into account both the operational (or use) phase and the other phases of the construction process.
Regarding the phases of the construction process, a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been carried out in relation to seven environmental impact categories (climate change, ozone layer depletion, soil acidification, eutrophication, photochemical pollutants, depletion of abiotic resources and total energy consumption) using the LCA ECÓMETRO tool, based on the UNE-EN 15804 (product) and UNE-EN 15978 (building) standards. This tool, developed by ‘Ecómetro’ association, assesses the impact of the building throughout its life: from the extraction and manufacture of materials, transport to the site and installation, to its maintenance and use during its useful life.
As for the use phase, the building has been designed under Passivhaus criteria and its energy performance has been analyzed with a double simulation (dynamic simulation with the Design Builder program and, in parallel, with the Passive House Planning Package program). The objective was to design a building for the highest energy efficiency.
These are the strategies to reduce energy in the use phase:
-Bioclimatic design: unobstructed south orientation, cross ventilation, solar shading and solar gain.
-Energy efficiency: SATE insulation, no thermal bridges, high performance carpentry and triple glazing, air tightness, double-flow controlled mechanical ventilation with a heat recovery system.
This is a net-zero carbon building, certified with the "CO2Nulo" seal from 'Ecómetro’. It doesn’t emit a single gram of CO2 in its operation as it doesn’t house any combustion system, is fully electrified and uses 100% renewable energy, which comes in part from the 33.3 kW of photovoltaic installation on site.
During the manufacture of materials and their transport, 1,300 tons of CO2 were generated, which were offset through a reforestation program.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
During the last decades the urban landscape of large spanish cities has been dominated by the conventional brick residential building, which has homogenized neighborhoods, districts and even entire cities. Entrepatios Las Carolinas was conceived as a reaction to this aesthetic model. The very decisions of the community to create common spaces also influence the aesthetics of the building. For example, on the front façade there are not the usual separations between terraces and balconies, but on each floor there’s a large open-air corridor (called ‘corrala’ in Spanish) that reaches all the dwellings. The importance given to the common areas during the construction affects them at this level too, as they are places for community life.
On the other hand, determinations based on bioclimatic, passive and ecological design have direct repercussions on the aesthetic dimension of the building. Some of the most obvious examples are the use of white paint on the front façade -for its better thermal behavior, both for the building and for the city-; or its exterior roller blinds (a local variety called “alicantinas” in Spanish) on the façade's corralas, which when raised show the large windows through which the sun enters and heats the houses in winter -and when lowered create a shaded area that prevents heat from entering-.
Key objectives for inclusion
The project involves the neighboring community as well as the external community.
Participatory design: a participatory process by the future inhabitants and the architecture studio was designed for the development of the project in 13 workshops over 10 months. The architecture was a co-design work that enabled discussion and activated the imagination and affections of all parties. A shared methodology was used with different social dynamics and physical and digital participation. Consensus was prioritized and majority voting was used to make decisions. A consensus definition of the term "sustainability" was obtained, as well as the level of investment.
Social action: the project was designed with the objective of generating a community living space with a social action perspective, both internally (among the members of the community itself) and externally (from the community towards the neighborhood and the nearby urban and social context). Unlike conventional residential developments, the building houses a higher percentage of spaces shared by the community. The objective from the design phase was that community participation would take the form of places to share (coworking, kitchen, laundry...) and group activities: bike workshop, collective purchase of organic products or shared care for children and the elderly.
A context was created in which the inhabitants were part of the design process of the housing and common spaces in real time. Together with sAtt studio, they were responsible for the decisions that made Entrepatios Las Carolinas an economically and environmentally sustainable space. In addition, the right of use regime gives the possibility to those who cannot afford to buy a house to have access to a home outside the speculative logic of the market.
The design considered energy consumption, maintenance costs and the useful life of the construction materials, thus guaranteeing tangible savings for the cooperative members in the long term.
Results in relation to category
The regaining of the sense of belonging to a community is one of the main reasons for the existence of Entrepatios, since the cooperative is formed by individuals whose aim is to recovery that lost space and have the possibility of living in line with their ethical, environmental and social values in the context of a large city from the perspective of the group.
Entrepatios Las Carolinas is based on a model of collaborative and ecological housing that seeks to provide solutions to one of the most pressing problems in our societies: the lack of social cohesion and the consequent loneliness. The World Health Organization has been warning for years that in our increasingly connected and fast-paced societies, many people, especially the elderly, suffer from unwanted loneliness.
Entrepatios challenges this trend through a culture of mutual support, care and environmental sustainability. The building has several common spaces to develop community life: kitchen, dining room, common terrace with vegetable garden, inner patio, laundry, multipurpose room and bicycle parking and workshop. Sharing infrastructure is only the basis for collectivizing the upbringing, care, joys and sorrows of life or the knowledge and interests of all the neighbors.
The design phase had a positive impact on this restitution, as it was a joint process in which sAtt molded itself to the will of those who were to be the inhabitants of the building, thus seeking collective benefit and giving a voice to cooperative members who made the building their own from the planning phase and created a community before they even lived in it. This perspective of the commons has the vocation of becoming a reference in the neighborhood and projecting it beyond the project itself, making room in these active common spaces for activities that involve the people of the area and also integrate into the collective dynamics of Entrepatios Las Carolinas, for example, joining in the joint purchase of organic products.
How Citizens benefit
The design system of Entrepatios Las Carolinas was based on the continuous collaboration between sAtt and the future inhabitants of the building. Decisions in this area were channeled through 13 face-to-face workshops in which the relationship between public and common uses was defined, private uses and the types of housing associated with them were structured, and a collective reflection was carried out on the levels and models of sustainability that were desired to be achieved.
In addition to these face-to-face workshops, complementary dynamics were carried out through digital tools with which the process was amplified beyond the physical. With this mix of face-to-face and digital, a process of collective intelligence was created in which the community was able to develop more open and transparent communication, deliberation and management dynamics.
This system also facilitates the resignification of the collective in a context that seems to seek the atomization of the individual. Although the privacy of each house is preserved, the inhabitants share services and infrastructures, such as common areas, a workshop or a laundry. In addition, all the family units participate in a consumers cooperative that supports ecological and local production. All this results in the creation of reciprocal links between neighbors; the common is built from the private.
The success of Entrepatios Las Carolinas demonstrates that an alternative community model to real estate speculation and the individualization of society is possible.
Physical or other transformations
Innovative character
Entrepatios Las Carolinas has defined its own model of sustainability based on a powerful innovation in each of its axes: social, economic and environmental.
The promoter group and the technical team of the project have jointly developed a methodology to analyze from a systemic approach where to invest resources. This has made it possible to have an exhaustive parallel analysis throughout the design process of the environmental part related to the economic part for decision making. An analysis that, in addition to the use phase, thanks to the application of the Passivhaus standard methodology, contemplates all the energy embedded in the materials and in other phases of the construction process studied with the LCA ECÓMETRO tool, opening a reference model in sustainable building.
On the other hand, the amortization studies allowed the standard to cross the energy (or environmental) and economic barriers to reach the social. A higher initial investment collectively reduces future individual installments, which will reduce the risk for the most economically vulnerable families once the amortization period has passed. This is a long-term economic approach that breaks with the tendency in this and other sectors to maximize strictly economic benefits in the short term.
The very process of designing the building was an innovation, since the cooperative members themselves were an active part of it, as opposed to a traditional model of buying and selling real estate in which decisions at this level are made in a hierarchical manner and imposed from the top down.
Learning transferred to other parties
The possibility of transferring the project's results and learnings is not only potential, it is a reality. sAtt studio is currently aplying this model in other urban and rural contexts and the Entrepatios cooperative has a new building development under construction. sAtt has set up Distrito Natural, its own real state promoter, that has a plan to promote 10 Triple Balance collaborative housing buildings in Madrid over the five next years.
In the urban environment, three multifamily developments are already underway: Talco, Villaverde Plaza and Pirita, with 17, 13 and 11 homes respectively. In the rural area, there are already two developments under development: vibio.land (60 single-family homes) and Ladera (9 multi-family homes).
Links to some of this projects:
-Talco:
https://satt.es/portfolio_page/covivienda-ecologica-talco/
-Vibio.land:
https://distritonatural.es/descubre-una-comunidad-regenerativa-vibio-land/
-Ladera:
https://distritonatural.es/proyecto/edificio-ladera/
