Balearic Social Housing Model: When a Government Office Became a Laboratory for Dreaming

On an island floating between the sea and tourism, hotels fill every summer and the island empties of its own people every autumn, while an old system in a small government office counts figures, signing contracts with large companies and repeating the same plan until social housing becomes an entry in a spreadsheet. An economist and an architect, Cris Ballester Parets and Carles Oliver Barceló of the Balearic Housing Institute, walk in carrying a question: what if social housing became a laboratory? They rethink who designs, who buys the materials and who decides the shape of a roof, building with local stone, wood from nearby forests and materials wasted on other sites, and choosing builders who understand the climate and respect the hand of the local worker. The Island, watching from a distance, says that everything built on it was for the passing stranger and that a house is now being built for those who will stay, and an international jury gives the Balearic Social Housing Model the OBEL Award for changing a way of thinking. The book ends with a house that is complete only when someone lives in it, and with a roof above a family as proof that a system can change from within.