Living in Community: Participatory Practices in Catalonia’s Housing Cooperatives – LACOL: Carles Baiges Camprubí - Architektur Agenda

In the coming semester, we will continue our lecture series “On Collaborations” and have asked our three guests to reflect on the significance of collaborations for their own practice and their potential relevance. Existing, unresolved challenges and conflicts in this context will also be considered based on their work.
To what extent do collaborations influence their thinking within their practice and existing socioeconomic structures, such as working conditions?
In addition, we ask our guests to relate their experiences to a range of educational requirements.

Cooperative housing in Catalonia is a relatively recent yet rapidly growing movement that has expanded into more than sixty innovative projects across the territory in the last decade. Emerging in response to the housing crisis and speculative real estate models, cooperative housing proposes a collective, nonprofit, and bottom-up approach in which housing is understood as a shared resource. User participation plays a central role in shaping the architectural project, from the earliest design decisions to long-term management. These participatory processes become a key driver of social, spatial, and environmental innovation, transforming not only housing models but the architectural practice itself.

The lecture will be held in english