The two winning projects of the European Collective Housing Award reflect, in my view, the two most important challenges currently facing European cities: the housing crisis and the climate crisis.

The issue of affordable housing is high on the agenda in many places in Europe. Particularly where the need for extra housing is high, the supply of housing is increasingly falling prey to commodification, in the form of local speculation or global investment phenomenons. As a result, many inhabitants no longer have the sufficient financial means to find suitable housing in the city. This affects not only the lowest income categories, but also teachers, nursing staff, police officers, etc. – people in professions that are essential to the functioning of urban life. In this way, the rising cost of housing threatens to disrupt not only the social composition of the city but also the economy of urban key services.

This housing crisis is unfolding against the backdrop of a much more comprehensive crisis : climate change and its impact on the quality of urban life. Now that the consequences of rising temperatures and loss of biodiversity are becoming undeniably apparent, not least in densely built-up cities, a paradigm shift in the design of our spatial environment is really imperative. In addition to urgent mitigation measures, a more fundamental change in our approach of urban development is needed in order to drastically reduce CO₂ emissions from the construction sector.

The two crises are not separate from each other, but interrelated, because the ecological transition will only succeed if it is also socially inclusive. Because the global nature of climate change requires a systemic response, our cities need a society-wide approach, involving all city inhabitants and users, from rich to poor. As has been expressed in French politics, those who are primarily worried about their own precarious living conditions and are therefore preoccupied with making it to the end of the month (“la fin du mois”) have no energy left to care much about the end of the world (“la fin du monde"). As with other wicked problems we face in European cities, there is no point in tackling the transition within architecture alone; rather, it requires transversal thinking and working across policy areas and professional fields. We will not get there by relying on individual actions either, as these never achieve a systemic impact, given that not all individuals in society have the same capacity to make their commitment to this transition.

The transition must be socio-ecological, or it will not happen. I therefore believe in the need for a collective approach to the housing crisis and the climate crisis, which is why I consider the emphasis on collectivity in the European Collective Housing Award to be so important.

This situation is not different in Brussels, where I was the Bouwmeester Maître Architecte (BMA) from 2015 to 2025. The BMA is a government-appointed official who advocates for spatial quality in urban development from an independent position. This position is unique, covering both formal tools and informal practices that together form the “soft power” of the BMA. While the most visible role is the organisation of architectural competitions, the BMA team also helps to put new issues on the political agenda, promote transversal solutions and stimulate change in urban development policy. In doing so, “equality of quality” is the motto: in the city, the ambition for quality should apply everywhere, not just to prestigious projects, not just in the city centre, not just for the highly educated, well-off population. Nevertheless, it happens often that spatial interventions to improve a neighbourhood lead to existing inhabitants leaving later on the very same neighbourhood, due to rising house prices as a result of the improvement. In Brussels, we were confronted with local activist committees calling to stop planning any urban renewal projects in certain neighbourhoods, as these would inevitably lead to gentrification. “Better do nothing” is a position I cannot share from an ethical perspective on my profession, but gentrification is certainly the Achilles heel of many well-intentioned urban regeneration projects. It is another reason why I find the two winners of the European Collective Housing Award very relevant, also in relation to my own practice in Brussels.

La fin du mois

The La Borda housing project in Barcelona by Lacol architects represents an alternative model of living, with a focus on community-building. The architecture accommodates this objective of social cohesion, for example in the central open space, but also because some functions in the building are shared. In doing so, attention is given to architectural quality, not in the form of some slick design, but rather of a fundamental nature. For example, the laundry room has been given a beautiful spot in the building with lots of natural light, demonstrating that it is not a secondary service space for domestic work that is often hidden away based on gender bias, but rather a space that invites social interaction. Such elements of quality are rarely found in public housing, which is designed with the “average” tenant in mind, nor in private project development, where every m² is exploited to maximise profit.

The architectural quality of La Borda is certainly thanks to the financial development model behind it, namely a housing cooperative. This form of housing development and management is anti-speculative and offers members of the cooperative the security of lifelong living at cost price. In Europe, housing cooperatives are fairly well known in parts of Germany and Switzerland and attracting growing interest in other countries. In the Netherlands, the authorities have decided to provide financial support to set up more cooperatives. The results are still limited, and the same applies to Belgium. In Brussels, with the BMA team, we have been campaigning intensively since early 2024 to promote opportunities for housing cooperatives, alongside the initiatives already underway by the Community Land Trust Brussels, which are comparable to a cooperative model.

The most important argument in favour of cooperative housing is the financial aspect, which guarantees an affordable lifetime home, thanks to a system that is neither public nor private and could therefore potentially become a new third pillar of housing supply.

That said, there is also the aspect of architectural quality. Since the principle is not about series production to be as efficient as possible, the design is often more outspoken. That's so for La Borda, both in terms of how the building is embedded in the context, how the plan is organised, and how the façades are materialised, but we also saw it during the competitions that BMA organised for CLTB in Brussels. For example, in the winning project “Tivoli” by V+ architects, the common circulations are larger dan usually and the private outdoor spaces are open to the street, in order to facilitate encounters within and outside the resident's community. Such generous design would never have been possible in projects that have no cooperative spirit at their core.

La fin du monde

Esch Sintzel Architects welcomed the opportunity to integrate social objectives and collective facilities into their housing project in Basel, as demanded by a clearly committed client; the kind of clients in the housing market that Switzerland is very lucky to have. What really sets this project apart is that these ambitions were realised in an architectural project that did not have the freedom to start from scratch with a new building, but instead incorporated the building that was already on the site. The concrete structure of the former wine warehouse has been largely preserved and then raised and complemented with new architecture. In such a combination, one would expect problems, but what emerges is architectural poetry. There is the façade design, with bare wooden columns on the inside and a colourful filigree-like composition on the outside, befriending the concrete structure, which nevertheless has a completely different personality. The stubborn figure of the concrete structure plays a surprising role in the floor plans of the appartments as well, as the central pivot of space. With a reference to Auguste Perret, the giant concrete column is like a friend in the room : there is always someone at home here.

Preserving the concrete structure resulted in important savings in terms of energy and CO₂ compared to total demolition. Probably more than in other cities, in Brussels there was a habit of razing any building that had been written off and replacing it with a new construction. This practice was known as “Bruxellisation” and showed little respect for the existing context. With BMA, we have made great efforts in Brussels since 2015 to change this practice towards preserving buildings as much as possible, or at least their concrete structure. This is a key to reducing the high CO₂ emissions of the construction sector. Systematically replacing existing buildings by high-performance new buildings is not a solution because the demolition required to do so ignores the CO₂ embedded in existing structures, known as embodied carbon. A lot of earlier spent energy –so-called grey energy– is wasted in the case of demolition, not to mention the additional energy required for the demolition itself and then the production and supply of new building materials. Premium buildings may score well on corporate sustainability ratings like BREEAM or LEED, but they do so mainly by aiming for low operational energy consumption that will only deliver a carbon offset decades from now.

Given the cumulative effect of emissions on the climate, however, CO₂ reductions today are far more important than CO₂ reductions in the future. We need strategies that reduce emissions now, not 30 years from now.

If we want to have a systemic transition in the construction sector, it will be necessary not only to reuse buildings with exceptional architecture, but to scale it up to mainstream practice. Grey energy and embodied carbon give even the most banal building a value. Such awareness is growing throughout Europe. In Brussels, the number of vacant office buildings being coverted into housing has been rising sharply since 2021. Today, up to 40% of large housing projects (more than 5,000 m²) come from the transformation of former office buildings from the 1970s, 1980s or even 1990s. It shows that reuse is no longer niche. It may still be in its infancy, but the ambition should be to bring it into the mainstream.

Sweet disorder

The two winning projects of the European Collective Housing Award convincingly demonstrate that there are new paths towards affordable and sustainable housing, especially on a collective scale. I would like to conclude with a personal compliment. In my practice as a BMA in Brussels, I have been involved in many competitions. It often happened that the winning project was surely well-deserved, but not as exciting as the runner-up because it showed some kind of “abnormality” in relation to the -sometimes very average- expectations of a jury. For instance, the plan was too unconventional and you don’t want future residents to be unhappy with it, or the abundance of communal space undermined the financial balance, or the matchmaking between client and architect didn't work, and so on. That's why I'm particularly pleased with what one could call the victory of exciting abnormalities in the winning projects by Lacol and by Esch Sintzel: thank you for the laundry room with too much sunlight in Barcelona and thank you for the thick column that stands in the way in Basel! •

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