From ideas to process-projects
Europan 16 - Beizama (ES)
« Ongi Etorri »
Project strategy family:
- Ecological connections
- Inclusive morphologies
- Inventive typologies
- Reinterpreted heritage
- Urban articulations
Process category:
- Direct order processes
- Competitive processes
- Co-creative processes
- Collaborative processes
- Participative processes
- Participation of the Living processes
- Adaptative legal framework processes
Authors: oe.proiekt (Clara Alsedà, Pol Mensa, Jordi Olivella, André Del Río, Cynthia Rosalía Rabanal, ES)
Client(s): Regional Government of the Basque Country
Dates: 2021 - ...
Driving forces: CLIENT
Site
Beizama (ES)
SCALE S/S SIZE 2ha / 0.5ha
The key challenge in this area is inclusion, given the need to retain young people locally and reverse the trend of an aging municipal population; indeed, the current housing stock fails to meet the expectations of young people wishing to live in their home community. The aim is to identify innovative rural housing models that can engage with urban structures and traditional architecture, while serving as an example for other localities like Beizama.
Awarded Idea
Project - Ideas
Ongi Etorri
Beizama is a mountain village of 200 inhabitants in the Basque Country that is losing its population. The project welcomes 12 new homes as an opportunity to bring back the services lost with depopulation, in turn attracting even more inhabitants and thus starting a new cycle of growth and development. The project turns the steep slope of the plot into a virtue, drawing a path that saves the height difference and connects it with the existing social poles of the village. This path is established as a public street and surrounded by workshop spaces that, in their positioning, configure new balconies and public squares. Above these squares and closely related to them, the same cells group together to form dwellings capable of adapting to multiple lifestyles. Due to their direct access to the surrounding landscape and multiple façade orientations, each dwelling becomes a house.
Project Strategy
Family: Inventive typologies
REINTERPRETING A LOCAL RURAL TYPOLOGY TO ACCOMMODATE CONTEMPORARY LIFESTYLES
The project is based on an analysis of the typology of the caserío, from which it extracts a series of elements that will later be incorporated into the proposal. It approaches the intervention on the plot by means of four pieces placed on the ground organizing new accesses and paths that allow to go around the new settlement, as well as communicating it with the centre of Beizama. The use of the ground floors, with covered spaces that can sometimes be opened and sometimes closed, allows an approach to this new interpretation of the typology of the caserío as a productive space capable of being incorporated into the urban fabric.
During its operational phase, the project underwent adjustments driven—beyond regulations—primarily by cost reductions and improved construction facilities. Parking spaces were relocated to an adjacent plot, and the gaps between the interiors and the grounds were narrowed.
The award-winning team also developed a road network plan for the housing and incorporated new requirements from the Region and the city by adding environmental documentation, a new requirement for construction in the Basque Country. The executive project has been submitted (beginning 2026) and the Basque government is now preparing the documents for the contracting of the construction works.
Process
Category(ies): Direct order processes, Adaptative legal framework processes
Direct order processes
Following the competition, the team was commissioned to oversee the urban and architectural project management of their project, including 12 social housing units for rent.
Adaptative legal framework processes
The Basque region had to create new technical regulations for the housing units.
