The 27 officially subsidized dwellings built by Nasuvinsa in Tudela’s Azucarera neighborhood is part of Navarra Social Housing, a regional plan to provide affordable rental homes. Located on the edge of the urban fabric, with views of the agrarian landscape of the Ebro riverside, the building presents a skin with tones echoing the surroundings, and meets the highest standards of energy efficiency, with near-zero consumption of artificial power.

The 4,967-square-meter development offers two- and three-bedroom apartments measuring between 69 and 90 square meters, and each unit comes with a storage room and a garage slot. The overall design shows an inner courtyard and the homes compactly placed along the perimeter. In this way the living rooms, placed at the corners, can face two directions.

The project has obtained Passivhaus certification for its drastic reduction of energy requirements and its use of renewable sources. The energy it generates on its own covers 100% of its needs. Heating, cooling, and hot water are supplied through a centralized system in which a boiler is fed with biomass containing splinters of wood.

The building’s energy demands are reduced by means of passive measure, such as thermal insulation in all exterior walls, high-performance joinery, three-layer window glazing, external solar protection solutions (for summer) and harnessing of direct sunlight (in winter). The flats also benefit from ventilation with heat recovery and radiant flooring, as well as cooling through an air system on the roof.