Rotterdam and Spain-based architecture firm JA arquitectura has unveiled its competition proposal for "flexible" social housing scheme in Ibiza, Spain. Submitted for an ideas competition, the studio's design aims to balance affordable living spaces with flexibility. 

The balance between private space and common uses is provided with a variety of housing types, relation with the environment and strong identity.

Called Poros, the 2,166-square-meter area accommodates various housing units with flying bridges, open terraces, outdoor staircases. Located at Platja den Bossa in Ibiza, the design is inspired by the elements of traditional Ibizan architecture and abstracted and used as design resource, both in form and materiality. 

Its all-white colored architecture, rationality of form and material are reflected in a series of compact and tectonic volumes. 

"There is no construction on the lots adjacent to the building, rather than on the opposite front of the avenue where the main hotels and souvenir shops are located that do not serve as a reference with which to integrate," said the firm. 

"With the consequent lack of references and to carry out the important task of integration in the context, two principles are used: Recall the local architecture and adaptation to the environment."

The studio stated that "like the vernacular architecture, the shape of the building is the product of the reaction with the environment that surrounds it to integrate the necessary resources, take advantage of natural energy and protect against adverse elements."

JA arquitectura adapted all these principles into a single architecture in which form and construction respond to the needs of function, program and sustainability. 

The scheme generates an autonomous building based on traditional systems of passive sustainability in which the need to include complex engineering is reduced to its minimum expression.

Concept diagrams

All images courtesy of JA arquitectura

> via JA arquitectura