Lacol: Community Infrastructure
The Barcelona design cooperative discusses the La Borda housing project and its horizontal approach to architectural practice.
November 28, 2022
Recorded on November 8, 2022.
Current Work is a lecture series featuring leading figures in the worlds of architecture, urbanism, design, and art.
In this lecture, Cristina Gamboa Masdevall and Eliseu Arrufat Grau, two of the 14 cofounders of Lacol, present several of the nonprofit cooperative’s projects, including:
- Coòpolis, a facility for the promotion and development of the cooperative economy in Barcelona
- La Comunal, a cultural space that houses eight cooperative organizations, including Lacol, on a rehabilitated industrial site
- La Borda, a 28-unit housing cooperative organized by its users and built on municipal land.
Through these projects, Gamboa and Arrufat show how Lacol’s work incubates new social and economic structures.
The presentation is followed by a conversation with Anna Puigjaner, co-founder of MAIO, and Elisa Iturbe, an assistant professor at Cooper Union.
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