More than a thousand pieces of wood made in factory will be used to raise the new public housing development with industrialised construction, which is located in the neighborhood of Besòs and Maresme, in the district of Sant Martí. Specifically, C. de Pallars, 487-489 is the location of this building, which during the morning of Thursday, February 9 has focused attention with the act of laying the first wood. The ceremony was attended by the councilor for housing and renovation of the Barcelona City Council, Lucía Martín.
The building, which has been under construction since last October 2022, will consist of 42 public housing units, reinforcing the commitment of the Barcelona City Council to expand the public housing stock in this booming district. A development that will become one of the highest in the city built with wood, together with the Cirerers cooperative housing development.
The architectural teams Oikosvia Arquitectura, SCCL (formed by Manolo Ortiz and Jaume Alcover) and Fabregat & Fabregat, SCP (formed by Josep Maria Fabregat Estraguès and Joan Fabregat Pla) are in charge of carrying out the work, which is expected to cost 5,034,960 euros and is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2024.
Wood, a bet with multiple benefits
Up to 1,103 pieces of wood previously made in the factory from spruce wood from sustainably managed forests will be used to erect this building with a basement, first floor, seven floors and a roof floor. Starting with the first floor slab, the building’s structure is made of laminated wood, in the form of slabs and vertical CLT panels, which are clad on the facades with a low environmental impact thermal insulation system on the outside, such as rock wool.
In general, these are low environmental impact materials that cause much less noise and dust than others, and also significantly reduce the duration of the construction work. While a building like this can be completed in two years with a traditional construction method, construction using prefabricated parts shortens the time frame to just over a year. So much so that each of the seven floors can be erected in just one week.
In addition, these types of industrialised developments are tendered jointly for the project and the work, so that the construction company and the team of architects work together from the first to the last day.
More than 380 industrialised production homes in the city
The evolution of the use of industrialised construction in public housing is a reality, as the figures show. Currently, there are nine developments that the City Council has launched to expand the public housing stock, some of which are committed to the use of wood. This is the case of the C. de Pallars development (42 dwellings), C. de Binéfar (24 dwellings), C. del Marruecos (45 dwellings) and C. Dolores Iturbe Arizcuren. Dolors Iturbe Arizcuren (40 dwell.), in the Sant Martí district, and two developments in Casernes (70 and 56 dwell.), in Sant Andreu. All this, added to block A of l’Illa Glòries (51 dwell.), in the Eixample district, and the APROP housing units, brings the total number of housing and housing units produced using industrial methods to 382.
All of them, developments that contribute to the expansion of the public and affordable housing stock in Sant Martí, which has been increased by approximately 2,000 apartments since 2015, with an investment by the City Council of around 244 million euros. Moreover, in overall city terms, the stock has grown by more than 4,000 apartments compared to the 2015 figures, a fact that puts the current stock at around 11,600 apartments. And the forecast does not stop evolving in the coming years, with a public park under municipal management that in 2025 will have doubled compared to what it was seven years ago.