The social housing project in Sa Pobla, an agricultural municipality in Mallorca, addresses the housing pressure and vulnerability of its working population. Located in an area of new growth, it follows the traditional urban pattern with housing aligned to a road. The building, with a double southwest-northeast orientation, optimises space by eliminating corridors and improving cross ventilation. The structure is based on ceramic load-bearing walls and wooden slabs, with a façade of sandstone and wooden elements that reflect the traditional aesthetics of the island, guaranteeing high construction quality.

Sa Pobla is a village and municipality in the Raiguer area of Mallorca (the central region of the island), characterised by being a large esplanade with a strong presence of orchards and water, located on the axis that connects Palma and the Bay of Alcúdia. Thus, Sa Pobla is a very agricultural village, with a significant presence of vulnerable population that is beginning to suffer real estate pressure due to speculative tourism with housing. With tourism being the main activity of the island, Sa Pobla is suffering more and more from the rises in rents and housing, as well as having a very vulnerable working population in the countryside. In this context, the construction of social housing is fundamental.

The project won the competition of IBAVI, the public company promoting social housing on the island. The projected building is located in a new growth area of the municipality, characterised by the construction of housing between party walls with facades aligned to the road, following the traditional urban pattern of Sa Pobla.

The footprint of the building within the plot is determined by the urban parameters of occupation and buildability and by the separations from the thresholds established by the municipal regulations. In this case, the building is aligned with the road and the party walls, but not with the buildable depth, to allow the appearance of the surface car park in the free space of the building on the ground floor. The result is a building with a double southwest-northeast orientation, whose facades face the street and the rear courtyard.

Following the particular urban morphology of the area, the project is structured by means of 5 bays perpendicular to the street of equal dimensions, and the programme is inserted within this organising scheme.

This scheme makes it possible to obtain a standard floor plan made up of 3 flats and a distribution space for accessing them, with a porch, towards the street façade. These dwellings are understood as a succession of rooms of similar proportions linked together, with the living-dining-kitchen spaces facing south-west and the bedrooms to the north, while the services occupy the central strip of the building.

The result of this floor plan is three dwellings, two of them with two bedrooms located at the ends and a central one with one bedroom. On the ground floor the central dwelling is removed, giving way to a passage that allows access both to the vertical communication cores and to the rear part of the plot, where the car park is located.

The façade reflects the regularity of this scheme and is composed of a set of identical windows, interrupted only by the appearance of a wooden porch located in the centre of the ground floor.

The spatial typology of the dwellings is based on the optimisation of space by eliminating corridors, understanding the house as a succession of interconnected living spaces. The windows and openings are placed in the centres of the spaces to achieve maximum lighting with the minimum number of elements.

The houses have two orientations, towards the street and towards the interior space of the plot. The house opens up, therefore, to a double orientation that allows us to choose at any given moment where to open and where to close depending on privacy, climate, noise, etc. This double orientation in large naturalised spaces improves the quality of the air in the homes through cross ventilation.

This approach to the building by means of bays perpendicular to the street is transferred to the structural functioning of the building, which is resolved by means of ceramic load-bearing walls with limited spans and one-way wooden slabs. Externally, the building recognises its surroundings, using marés stone as the façade material. The architectural openings are defined by stone jambs and lintels, while the window frames and sun protection are made of wood. These traditional elements of the island are integrated into the project, giving it a local aesthetic and high construction quality.

At the time of writing this lines, the project is still under construction. The keys are expected to be handed over to the neighbours in 2025.