The AV/Arquitectura Viva project turns 40 in 2025, and this is a good time to look back on our DNA. What was initially called Monografías de Arquitectura y Vivienda was a quarterly magazine edited by a public housing company, and of the four issues published that first year it devoted two to IBA Berlin, the most stimulating residential initiative in Europe at the time; another to the emerging regionalism in the new autonomous communities; and another to the housing projects in an Andalusia that had become a testing ground for the new social and urban priorities. From that distant 1985 to the recent publication of the book with 50 housing projects completed in Spain after 2000, both AV and Arquitectura Viva have covered the residential scene in Spain and abroad, as perhaps show my 40 introductions to as many issues, gathered in the book Modelos de habitar.
Housing has been an architectural challenge since modernity, but it also has an urban dimension inseparable from the development of cities, and a social one that makes it always a political concern. This is Spain’s current climate, marked by alarm over prices, by different perceptions of the crisis, and by the divergent proposals to address it. In the op-ed of the October 2024 issue, the title – ‘More Houses, Better Cities’ – summed up our position, underlining both the quantitative dimension of the problem and the need to ensure that the new buildings improve urban quality and sustainability.However, it is worth recalling how things have changed over these 40 years: from 1985 to the bursting of the real estate bubble in 2007, the housing units completed in Spain rose steeply from 200,000 a year to over 600,000, to plummet to the current 90,000, clearly insufficient to cater to demand.
The problem of scarce supply is made worse by reduced public investment: whereas two-thirds of the units built in 1985 were subsidized, this percentage did not reach 10% during the bubble, totaling less than 9,000 dwellings in 2023. The lack of investment is particularly damaging to social rental housing, very deficient in Spain, and can only be addressed through the public sector; affordable housing for rent is possible with public-private collaboration through transfers of land and urban planning modifications to increase density. But as these issues, as much as the limitation of subsidies, the control of tourist rentals, and industrialization to face of lack of qualified labor, require policies that are consensual, consistent, and sustained over time. For four decades we have dealt with housing as a technical and aesthetic issue, but now we must tackle it as a political, economic, and social challenge.
Lacaton & Vassal, 530 viviendas sociales, Burdeos (Francia)
