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Architecture supporting social sustainability in Barcelona’s Sarrià-Sant Gervasi district
Operating 24/7 and hosting up to a hundred homeless women, Shelter for Homeless Women is a VIVAS Arquitectos project in Barcelona’s Sarrià-Sant Gervasi district. The architects’ prime objectives for this project were to create a home and a safe space that encourage social interaction.
The shelter, in Plaça Kennedy, replicates the layout of an existing facility. But the project goes beyond the traditional vision of these structures as places that provide urgent responses to the basic needs of the greatest number of people, to focus on creating a shelter that’s as personalized as possible. The Sarrià-Sant Gervasi shelter is designed to help each guest rebuild an independent existence through social, employment, educational, and health resources.
The center helps women step back into a regular life through three key strategies: providing a safe place, including a garden, that’s detached from the city to ensure the privacy of its guests; a social space, with porticoes, glass balconies, terraces, and other meeting places that encourage interaction between residents, who are free to use them as they please; a place to call home, by minimizing the feeling that this is a structure that provides social assistance through the use of warm materials for the interiors and spaces on a domestic scale.
A key part of achieving this last objective is the choice of timber as the primary building material, which also significantly reduced construction times. Besides providing good insulation – and the building has near-zero energy consumption and Excellent BREEAM certification – timber creates a feeling of familiarity and comfort, both of which are essential for a structure such as the Sarrià-Sant Gervasi shelter.
Barcelona’s Shelter for Homeless Women was conceived as a single element composed of a rectangular prism approximately 60 m long, 16 m wide, and with a maximum height of 9 m. The building volume has three levels with shapes subtracted from it to create porches, verandas, terraces, and outdoor spaces, as well as intermediate spaces that add to the variety of the interiors and encourage social interaction.
Space is organized by function to ensure that guests and staff can easily navigate and use the shelter. Two internal staircases delineate the different sections of the building. Through the use of timber and blinds that automatically adjust according to temperature and light conditions, the shelter has near zero environmental impact.
Location: Barcelona, Spain
Architect: VIVAS Arquitectos
Client: BIMSA, Barcelona d’Infraestructures, Municipals
Gross Floor Area: 2964 m2
Consultants
Structural: Manuel Arguijo
Electrical: Eletresjota Tècnics Associat
Sustainability: DEKRA
Landscape: Ohrizons
Acoustics: Audiotec
Quantity Surveyor: QEstudi
Photography by José Hevia, courtesy of VIVAS Arquitectos
