The Barcelona City Council, through its Municipal Housing and Rehabilitation Institute (IMHAB), and Corpedificacions S.L (CORP) are about to finalise the project of a housing development in the La Verneda i La Pau area in the Sant Martí District.
Specifically, the development consists of 64 homes built on the former site of the Cobega factory, located at Rambla Guipúscoa 163-185. It is the result of a swap project between the private developer and the City Council whereby the Council assigns to CORP a property in Can Batlló in exchange for the assignment of the constructed homes of the Cobega development. The building is one of the four blocks that close off the street block contained between the streets Rambla de Guipúscoa and Camí de la Verneda. The three remaining blocks form part of a CORP private rental development.
The municipal corporation assigned to CORP the indivisible 15.54% of its property in the plot resulting from Batlló-Magòria, valued at €10,000,000, in exchange for the assignment of 67 protected homes in a specified regime of the promotion to be developed by CORP on the plot between the streets Guipúscoa, Ca N’Oliva and Binèfar at the boundary of the municipality of Sant Adrià de Besòs. The valuation of the homes was determined at €9,100.000. The difference of value of the swap, €900,000, was paid by CORP to the Council at the moment of formalising the swap.
The works began on 9 September 2020 and it is planned that in March 2022 the new residents will be able to occupy their homes. A total of 9,293 applications were received. The 64 affordable-rental homes of this promotion will be awarded with the next announcement of the Barcelona Social Housing Applicants Register.
The homes
The building consists of a ground floor and seven upper floors, and it has three fewer homes than those included in the initial project, that is to say, 64. In contrast, it incorporates a concierge’s office, a co-working space and a bike storage area. These modifications have signified an economic difference in regard to the specifications agreed in the original swap for an amount of €54,076.41 in favour of the City Council.
There are ten homes on each floor, except for the first and seventh, which have seven. The ground floor includes the concierge’s office and the utility meter rooms. The first floor has the co-working space and bike storage area, and the seventh floor has an exterior space for bikes and clothes lines, which are also included in the covered floor. All of the homes have a living-dining room, with a kitchen integrated with the rest of the rooms to facilitate socialising everyday tasks, and a terrace. Most of the homes also have a space for a washing machine which also serves as a small storage area. Of the 64 homes, 18 have one bedroom (three of them being adapted), 34 have two and 12 have three.
In construction terms, thermal insulation has been planned for the exterior of the façade to eliminate thermal bridges and improve the building’s thermal inertia and therefore its thermal behaviour during the summer months. The planned energy system is an individual aerothermal installation supported by photovoltaic power. The optimisation of the construction system and the efficiency of the energy system have made it possible to achieve homes with the highest energy certification and very significant reductions of the energy demand and the CO2 emissions associated with the climatisation of the building and the use of sanitary hot water.
More than 300 homes in progress in Sant Martí
The City Council currently has in progress the construction of 323 homes and is about to start building 244 more. Of these, 151 are of industrialised promotion, a method which ensures a reduction in the execution periods of the works and their environmental impact. The district also has nine municipally owned plots with urban planning classification for the construction of subsidised and/or social rental homes, two of which are in the land tender process, six in programmed tendering and one in the study phase.