The Sunflower Houses / Arenas Basabe Palacios + Buschina & Partner. Image © Kurt Hoerbst
There’s a lot of undeserved stigma surrounding social housing. Although many projects start off well enough with shiny ribbon-cutting photoshoots, the cameras move on and investment tends to dry up, and maintenance cut. A lack of suitable green spaces follows – due to low-maintenance, and eventually results in forgotten, isolated communities, eventually spiraling down the plughole of ghettoisation.
Although easily blamed, the architecture of high-rise social housing blocks is not the cause of the problem, but can instead be part of the solution. Building up instead of out still offers a sensible route through both the current housing and social crises – sharing space and resources.
Moreover, these four projects from across Europe show, integrating social housing developments around accessible courtyards of sustainable green space helps bring and keep communities together.
