Highest wooden building in Spain goes up: seven-storey apartment block in Barcelona

The €3-million block, funded entirely by members of the cooperative La Borda, S.C.C.L., will be destined for one owner rather than the individual apartments being sold off and will be an energy-efficiency category A structure – the most 'green' and cost-effective posible.

Having already won the European Habitat Social Production Award 2016, presented by the organisation Urbamonde, the property will be completed by April 2018.

It is being constructed on a site in Can Batlló which belongs to the council but has been leased free of charge to the cooperative for 75 years, which will almost certainly be renewed at the end of the term.

A crowdfunding appeal, a drive for new paying partners and a loan from Coop57 has helped make the wooden apartment block possible, and it is said to be a pioneer in social and ecological housing.

Back in 2015, the company House Habitat – which specialises in sustainable residential property – erected what is currently the tallest wooden building in Barcelona, a five-storey detached house of 346 square metres with an energy category A.

Elsewhere in Catalunya – in the land-locked Pyrénéen province of Lleida – the newly-founded company Behabitat specialises in self-sufficient low-energy wooden flat complexes.

More and more energy-efficient homes are gradually going up in Spain, with a growing number of them being made from wood – but the La Borda block will be the highest to date.

Photograph: A model of the eventual Barcelona block, taken by the cooperative La Borda S.C.C.L., which is funding the construction