Barcelona Cooperative Lacol Wins EU Mies Award for La Borda Housing

Barcelona-based architecture studio Lacol, founded in 2009 by fourteen university classmates and organized as a cooperative, won the EU Mies Award 2022 Emerging prize for La Borda, a cooperative housing project. The studio operates from a cultural center in the Sants neighborhood, shared with seven other cooperatives and designed by Lacol through a participatory process. La Borda, promoted by its future residents to access dignified, non-speculative housing, comprises 28 apartments arranged around a central courtyard with shared spaces including a kitchen, laundry, multipurpose room, and terraces. Built on municipal land leased to the cooperative for 75 years, the CLT structure incorporates energy-saving strategies. The EU Mies Award jury praised it as "an architecture that deeply explores the possibility of changing mindsets and policies and the relevance of inclusion; a transgressive intervention because, while housing construction is usually dominated by macroeconomic interests, in this case it is based on sharing resources and skills." Lacol is now working on additional cooperative housing projects in Barcelona, participatory interventions outside Catalonia as construction manager, and has founded the energy transition association BATEC, launching a local energy community in the La Bordeta complex.