Vivienda y Suelo de Euskadi, S.A.

Their core work

VISESA is the Basque Country's public housing and land development agency, responsible for planning, building, and managing social and affordable housing across the Euskadi region. In H2020, they bring real-world building stock and renovation experience to EU research consortia — serving as a living lab and demonstration partner for energy-efficient building renovation and smart city transformation. Their participation centers on applying research outcomes to actual public housing projects, bridging the gap between building research and large-scale implementation in the public sector.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

VISESA's H2020 journey began in 2015 with broad urban regeneration planning (FosterREG) and large-scale smart city demonstration (SmartEnCity), reflecting a strategic interest in city-wide energy transformation. By 2017-2018, their focus sharpened toward specific technical methods — affordable zero-energy buildings (A-ZEB) and digital tools like BIM for accelerating renovation (BIM-SPEED). This shift from high-level urban planning toward concrete renovation technologies and digital workflows suggests a maturing understanding of where their public housing portfolio adds most value to EU research.

VISESA is moving toward digitally-enabled, cost-effective deep renovation — expect future interest in digital twins, renovation-as-a-service, and scalable retrofit solutions for social housing.

How they like to work

VISESA always participates as a partner, never as coordinator — consistent with their role as a public housing operator providing real buildings and renovation projects as demonstration sites. With 78 unique partners across 12 countries, they work in large European consortia (typical for energy/buildings projects). Their value to consortia is not academic or technical leadership but access to actual public housing stock for piloting and validating research outcomes at scale.

VISESA has built a broad European network of 78 partners across 12 countries through 4 projects, mostly in the buildings and energy efficiency research community. Their connections span universities, engineering firms, municipalities, and technology providers involved in building renovation and smart cities.

What sets them apart

VISESA offers something most research partners cannot: a large portfolio of real public housing that can serve as demonstration and pilot sites for building renovation technologies. As a public body with a mandate to build and manage social housing in the Basque Country, they bring regulatory knowledge, tenant relationships, and operational scale that academic or private-sector partners typically lack. For any consortium needing a real-world validation site for energy renovation in Southern European climate conditions, VISESA is a strong candidate.

Highlights from their portfolio

• SmartEnCity
  By far their largest project (EUR 3.2M in EC funding), focused on transforming cities toward zero CO2 — Vitoria-Gasteiz was one of the lighthouse cities.
• BIM-SPEED
  Most technically specific project, targeting BIM interoperability and harmonization to cut renovation time — aligns with the EU Renovation Wave priorities.
• A-ZEB
  Directly addresses the cost barrier to zero-energy buildings, a critical gap for scaling public housing renovation.