Buildings that fit with the philosophy of the New European Bauhaus must offer more than just high energy efficiency. They must also be inclusive in the sense that everyone can afford them, and provide wellbeing to the people who live in them, says Marcos Ros Sempere.

Marcos Ros Sempere is a Spanish EU lawmaker belonging to the Socialists & Democrats (S&D) group. Read the following interview.

Q: If you had to tell apart a building constructed following the principles of the New European Bauhaus from the outside without going in, what would you single out?

A: The European Bauhaus is a different way of understanding our buildings but also our built environment, our public spaces, our cities, our neighbourhoods. And we have to take into consideration three aspects. First, we need sustainable buildings, cities or neighbourhoods. But we also need beautiful buildings and cities.

So what does it mean to be beautiful? Beauty means that a building fits to our needs, that our building offers good quality construction, built quality, spaces quality. Beauty is a very wide concept, in which we introduced a lot of things but which means that we have a good quality of life inside these buildings. And, of course, we need togetherness, we need inclusion, which is the third pillar of the New European Bauhaus.

If we are talking about an energy efficient building, no problem, we have several means of building a passive house. Buildings can be beautiful and very high quality. But if it is not an inclusive building, it won’t be a New European Bauhaus house, it will be a good energy project, a good beauty project, but not a European Bauhaus project.

Inclusive means that everyone can afford this kind of building. We are going to invest millions of euros to refurbish the buildings in the European Union, to raise them to energy standards that we demand now. The money has to go to the buildings in which people live that need it more, who suffer from energy poverty, and not to go to buildings in which the people that can afford to refurbish it themselves live.

If we combine these three pillars, and we have a project with these three that I mentioned, we will have a New European Bauhaus project.

Q: What’s your favourite European Bauhaus project that you think represents the movement best?

Read the full interview here.