Núria Moliner: "The best public housing in Spain is being built in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands."

BarcelonaThe Roquetes neighborhood of Barcelona is growing: for the past few months, the seventeen people who make up La Morada have been living there, a "transfeminist cooperative housing project driven by lesbians, trans people, and other dissident identities," as they describe themselves. Among them are Maria Salvador and Maria Berzosa. They opened the door to the ARA and to the architect and educator Núria Moliner (Barcelona, ​​1991), because they hosted her when she was preparing her book. Ten houses ten nights (Now Books). Moliner chose this building to have her portrait taken. While she poses for the photographer, Salvador and Berzosa explain why they chose this housing option, which in their case is promoted by the La Dinamo Foundation.

"Imagine that all your neighbors are your friends, so you can share a common project, six years of designing a building together. There's a proximity that means you can have breakfast and lunch with more people. And if the people in the fourth floor say they've made chickpeas and have leftovers with one, but you can go get it with many more people, and whenever you want, you can leave," explains Salvador. Another aspect of this approach is caregiving: "When a neighbor had a lot of work with the final submissions for a master's degree, we all fed her. And if you get sick and you have twelve neighbors, probably one will come and take care of you. That way, life is a little easier," says Salvador.

La Morada was designed by the architects of Lacol, known for the cooperative Laborda, for which they won the Mies van der Rohe Award in the emerging architect category. "La Morada offers an alternative to the speculative model. It's an architecture that stems from a need and a housing model, the transfer of use, which is neither buying nor renting," says Núria Moliner. "Here it may seem strange or innovative, but in cities like Copenhagen, a third of the homes are cooperatives, and some...

In addition to the apartments, which can be of three sizes, between 60 and 72 m²La Morada includes a courtyard with greenery and a bicycle rack, a communal terrace, a multipurpose room, a guest room, and a workspace. And on the rooftop, a photovoltaic pergola stands out, sheltering two washing machines and a clothesline. Salvador assures that he only gets a little overwhelmed with the space to hang clothes when families with children hang out their laundry together. "We still need time to accept this model, but we are welcoming it with open arms because housing is the population's number one concern, and the cooperative model is hopeful because I believe it is a prototype of a better world at the building level," explains Moliner. He also believes that, in this regard, Catalonia is a benchmark.

"On a national scale, and I don't know if I'd dare say internationally, the best public housing, the most innovative, the most pioneering, the most experimental, the highest architectural quality, is being built in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands, through Imhab [Barcelona Municipal Institute of Housing and Rehabilitation] and l'Imp [Balearic Institute of Housing]," says Moliner, who admits that housing is an issue that causes him "a lot of anxiety and frustration." "The cooperative model gives me hope, and it could be a path, although it's a very minority model and isn't yet a solution. We need to build a lot of public housing, working on regulations and doing everything possible to solve this huge problem," Moliner emphasizes.

A tribute to modern and contemporary Catalan architecture

In the book Ten houses ten nights, La Morada closes a tour that begins with Casa Mercaders, the Gothic palace that Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue renovated to make it their home, and continues with emblematic works of the 20th century such as Joan Miró's studio in Palma, by Josep Lluís Sert; the Gomis House by Antoni Bonet Castellana, and one of the apartments on the Isla de Viviendas Escorial, by José Alemán, Oriol Bohigas, José María Martorell, Francisco Medios, Antonio Perpiñá, José María Ribas, and Manuel Ribas. "I thought the book could be like a small tribute to modern and contemporary architecture," says Moliner. "Often we haven't understood or it hasn't been conveyed that architecture is heritage, that architecture is culture. And when it has been conveyed, it seems as if heritage ends in the Middle Ages. I wanted to convey that modern and contemporary architecture, the most recent constructions, are also heritage and that we can learn many things," he explains.

Regarding 21st-century Catalan architecture, the book includes Casa Horizonte, by the RCR studio; House 712, by Harquitectes; the modernist Casa Burés, for how the TdB Arquitectura studio has rehabilitated it; the Positive House, Josep Bunyesc, and La Morada. "If we learn to observe and value this contemporary architectural heritage, it will be easier to protect it. The first thing would be this, to talk about architecture because it is the scenery of our lives, because it affects us on so many levels, it conditions us and challenges us," says Moliner, who is preparing a new program for 3Cat, Between four walls, about the homes of people from the world of culture, and the second season of the docuseries Animal architects.

Núria Moliner decided not to build because she encountered the vision of an architecture disconnected from the "real needs of people" and "as an object or even as an artistic work." A distinctive feature of Ten houses ten nights It's that in some cases it's quite heartbreaking. For example, he criticizes the "countless, strident, self-centered buildings, the result of speculation" surrounding Joan Miró's studio in Palma, and the deafening noise at Casa Gomis that forced him to leave in the middle of the night. He also finds that the steel in Casa Horizonte is due to its sculptural character, but that the house lacks good thermal inertia. Moliner attributes the exorbitant prices of the homes in Casa Burés, which the Generalitat (Catalan government) sold off, to a Barcelona that has become "touristy and sold to the highest bidder."