Social housing finalist for the Mies Van der Rohe architecture award

Here are some of the differentiating aspects that make these social housing units, selected as a finalist by the jury of the prestigious European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture–Mies van der Rohe Award 2022, such a unique project:

• The full use of all floor space,doing away with shared or private corridors, and the distribution of floors with open, versatile rooms that can be adapted to any lifestyle.
• The intensive use of wood in the structure,aimed at improving the quality of the building, significantly reducing construction times, and limiting CO2 emissions.
• The project emerged from the desire to create a building that would facilitate community relationships and promote the integration of peopleinto all its aspects. KLEIN is proud to see how their Slidsliding systems have made it possible to transform the vision of this project into reality, acting as mobile wooden partitionsthat join interior spaces while making them more flexible.

The main floor of the building is based on a matrix of communicating rooms—114 areas per floor, 543 in total—all with similar dimensions, about 140 square feet each, without any hallways. The 85 apartments can be accessed through the terrace entryways that lead to the building’s inner courtyard.

Each unit is thus organized around several similarly-sized rooms that are interconnectedby large panels guided by KLEIN SLID sliding systems. Not only does the absence of corridors allow the surface area to be taken advantage of as much as possible, but any hierarchy between rooms is eliminatedand the use of each one is made more flexible. Contrary to usual layouts, there are no predetermined dining rooms or bedrooms: each family can choose the function of each space.

In the design, the kitchen is the central roomof each home. This location, chosen with a gender perspective in mind, makes housework more visiblewhile also making the kitchen a sort of passageway that replaces traditional hallways.

Each unit is thus organized around several similarly-sized rooms that are interconnectedby large panels guided by KLEIN SLID sliding systems. Not only does the absence of corridors allow the surface area to be taken advantage of as much as possible, but any hierarchy between rooms is eliminatedand the use of each one is made more flexible. Contrary to usual layouts, there are no predetermined dining rooms or bedrooms: each family can choose the function of each space.

In the design, the kitchen is the central roomof each home. This location, chosen with a gender perspective in mind, makes housework more visiblewhile also making the kitchen a sort of passageway that replaces traditional hallways.

The large sliding doors without any floor tracks, which are essentially mobile partitions, thus serve as dynamic connectors: they facilitate circulation and allow users to transform the home. The project’s architects offer an explanation of this novel spatial design: “It allows for larger room sizes and encourages ambiguous uses, which we think of as a flexibility that allows users to assign functions and rearrange how they use different spaces throughout the day”

KLEIN's SLID sliding systems, which come without any floor tracks, allow rooms to be joined or separated with a simple movement,using large wooden sliding panels. The repeated presence of this system reinforces the notion of ambiguous use and functional indeterminacy. Likewise, it enhances the distribution of natural light throughout the unit.

The SLID system allows for the concentration or expansion of rooms: two rooms can be joined together to create one larger one, allowing the home to oscillate between two ways of living. In this case, Peris + Toralopted for a recessed ceiling installation, consistent with the project’s overarching minimalist design. Click Slidto learn more about this system. Our new way of living requires spatial flexibility, maximized rooms, customized uses, and the integration of a gender perspective.

Congratulations to Peris + Toral and IMPSOL for their nomination as a finalist for the 2022 Mies van der Rohe Architecture Award and for having designed one of the boldest projects of recent years.

We are proud to have contributed our systems to this innovative vision of what housing should look like.