Entrepatios Madrid

What’s unique about the initiative?

Entrepatios is a neighbourhood community residing in a right-to-use cooperative housing building in Madrid since 2020. The high environmental standards of the building are combined with a democratic and collective organization that is sensitive to the differences among the inhabitants. Its intense community life is connected to the neighbourhood, trying to practise in the present what is desired for the cities of the future.

Most outstanding results

Entrepatios is the first ecological building with right of use in Spain that has been built between the centre of Madrid and the suburbs. It is a cohousing project, which means that it is the neighbours, members of the cooperative, who, through a participatory decision-making process, have decided on everything from the ecological materials to be used in the construction of the building to what part of the budget will be allocated to the insulation of the building and the type of air conditioning, among other things.

Communal spaces make up 15% of the building: a communal courtyard; a room that serves as a children’s play area and as a space for weekly food distribution; a garage with mainly bicycles; a room dedicated to housing a large cistern where rainwater is collected, treated and used for toilets and gardening, by drip; a workshop room where neighbours work with their hands; a communal laundry; and a rooftop dedicated to adult leisure. The child population accounts for almost half of the total, some twenty children between the ages of two and twelve.

The Entrepatios Las Carolinas cooperative is made up of the fifty-three people who live in its seventeen dwellings. Depending on the size of their dwelling, they have paid between 40,000 and 50,000 euros as a down payment, an amount that will be returned if they leave the cooperative and replaced by those who move in. The ownership of the building remains in the hands of the cooperative and its members use the homes, but never own them. The regime of cession of use is practically unknown in Spain and the lack of regulation makes the administrative process difficult.

To date, there are forty other housing projects in the pipeline, including a second Entrepatios building. The residents are still working to define their own rules.

Quote from the evaluation committee

“The project addresses the importance of housing as an individual right but also as common good both local and universal. Entrepatios offers a concrete community-led solution to recall the social function of housing and challenge private strategies that are using housing as a commodity. It also reflects the capacity of civil society to provide local responses to face the lack of commitment of the public sphere guaranteeing the right to adequate housing for all.”

– Amanda Flety

READ MORE

To know more, read this in-depth article. Also, you can scroll down to download the application form filled by this initiative to take part in the Transformative Cities award.