Housing: how to turn the omelette
There are many ways to propose solutions to the serious housing problem, and there is one that has to do directly with the architectural discipline: what kind of residential fabric, what structure and what urban model can make better cities, without consuming too much land and creating quality public spaces.
The type of city generated by the PAUs (Urban Action Program) of Madrid, the blocks proposed by certain Strategic Residential Areas, or the single-family homes that have proliferated in the metropolis (64,000 villas in twenty years, according to estimates by Antonio Font and Francesc Muñoz) are very different.
Part of the resistance to building more is explained by the uniformity of the residential landscape that has been built in recent years: anodyne blocks, with very similar apartments, without quality on the ground floors, and very little attention to the domestic dimension. The poor quality of what has been newly built weighs heavily when thinking in terms of urban transformation; people think that, to do the same as always, it might be better to leave it be. Those who can afford a detached house have it custom-made, and the rest settle for what they find in the block urbanism of the last 20 years: apartments that are the expression of the minimums required by the habitability decree. If we want to turn things around, we must bet on a qualitative leap in the quality of new neighborhoods.
In 1977, two giants of architecture joined forces for a competition regarding land owned by the Caja Provincial de Álava, in Vitoria. Initially, the project stemmed from the ACTUR (Urgent Residential Actions) plan of the National Institute of Urbanization (INUR), which allowed for the expropriation of land in specific locations; ultimately, an agreement was reached with the landowners on a formula involving surface rights to ensure public ownership. Although they won the competition, with great praise from the jury, the proposal was not carried out. But the drawings remain.
The proposal by Moneo and Solà-Morales detached itself from the built city and proposed a new language. And with what kind of houses? Neither blocks, nor towers, nor urban extensions: it was a model of row houses, with four-story streets, very sunny. The plots had a duplex on the ground floor and two smaller apartments on the two upper floors, so that it also responded to the demand of the elderly and the young. Modularizing the structures into units, half-units, and quarter-units helped them make parking viable (one space per dwelling). And the corners were intentionally different, with patio houses or splendid commercial premises, for a more interesting life at street level. The complex aimed to address what is so essential that we people look for in a home: a terrace, a garden, a porch, and open views to tree-lined streets. Since the streets had very reasonable dimensions, the houses paid for the urbanization without effort. It was a fantastic model for intermediate cities, and valid for the 21st century if materials with a low ecological footprint and renewable energies are added.
The need to create compact cities is often linked to the height of buildings, but growing upwards can also impoverish public spaces or increase the costs of foundations and installations (running pipes and conduits through various floors and fire sectors to the roofs has significant costs). It makes no sense to build blocks as tall and long in La Sagrera as in the neighborhoods of Igualada, Girona, or Sant Cugat. Each city requires different models of compactness. The model from the team formed by Moneo and Solà-Morales opened the door to the option of maintaining density but with reasonable heights, favoring the most intensive land use possible. And, in the process, it generated fantastic houses for all tastes.
As with Álvaro Siza's renowned proposal at Quinta de Malagueira, also built around 1977, the authors proposed that the dwellings could grow over time, by adding floors, courtyards, galleries, and attics. In Évora, Siza had discarded the model of high towers and large blocks in favor of a more flexible system, which was capable of responding to the aspiration of hundreds of residents of the Boa Vontade cooperative to have their houses somewhat customized. Siza contributes a structure that guarantees coherence to the whole while allowing for small variations over time, and which connects with Fernando Távora's readings at the Porto School, understanding architecture as a service capable of understanding and proposing, with a certain humility, solutions adapted to the topography of the site and the circumstances of the moment.
We are living in turbulent times regarding the change in housing policies. Business organizations, developers' associations, professional colleges, universities, and social movements propose changes to the mortgage system, to land management, to legal changes, to the control of speculation, to the regulation of rents, to the mobilization of empty apartments... But all of this, in the end, also involves building on degraded land or underutilized parts of cities, which generate new neighborhoods that are much better than the existing city: both in form, and in energy consumption, as well as in the quality of greenery and shops. And here there is a pending architectural and cultural research, halfway between the polytechnic and the social sciences, which should help to situate what we are talking about and what we are drawing when we put 50,000 apartments on the table.
