‘They look like homes for rich people’: why Britain should look to Europe for its council housing revolution

On the continent, stylish, sustainable, community-minded social housing is a given, and nowhere more so than in Spain – from an elegant Barcelona women’s refuge to cool, solid stone houses in Mallorca

In Britain, as our government has promised, we’re going to have a “council housing revolution”, the building of as yet unknown numbers of homes at genuinely affordable rents, a return to policies of 50 and more years ago in order to address the well-known housing crisis. Which is welcome. It also raises the question of what these homes may be like, of their quality as well as their quantity, whether they are stacked-up accumulations of units or places that contribute to their communities and enrich the lives of their inhabitants.

Luckily there are, close at hand, outstanding examples of how this might be done, in cities and countries on the continent of Europe. In many of these places, public bodies and architects see their job as doing more than meeting numbers of homes completed. They also want to make beautiful places to live, sustainable to build and run, with homes planned to suit contemporary ways of living, and with shared and public spaces given as much importance as the private interiors. They seek to reduce environmental impacts by using natural materials, and to adapt existing buildings where possible rather than demolish them. They aim to reduce the costs of heating and air conditioning almost to zero – a simple-enough ambition, and extremely important to their tenants.