The future arrival of Hospital Clínic to the upper section of Diagonal, scheduled for 2035 on the land currently occupied by the sports area of the University of Barcelona (UB), opens the door to a new stage for an environment that already has a long scientific trajectory and brings together faculties, research centers, and institutions linked to the health sector. But this transformation will not have to wait a decade to become visible: the University of Barcelona is already working on new projects to strengthen the research ecosystem that has been configured in the area.
One of the UB's main commitments is the construction of two new facilities on either side of Diagonal. The two buildings will add 24,000 square meters and will require an investment of 71.5 million euros, financed by the Generalitat de Catalunya and the university itself. One of the properties will house the new Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, currently located in the UB's historic building in Plaça Universitat, as well as research spaces in economics and business. The other will expand the facilities of the Barcelona Science Park (PCB), which is fully occupied.
The forecast is that construction of the two buildings will begin during the last quarter of 2027 and be completed in 2029. Five years after, therefore, the UB and the Government of the Generalitat signed an agreement in April 2024, with the aim of promoting research and talent in these areas. Thus, although they will not be part of the future Clínic hospital complex on Diagonal, the two actions are part of the same strategy: to reinforce the weight of the university and research in the upper part of Diagonal and prepare the territory for a transformation that will go beyond the Clínic's healthcare activity.
A new headquarters for the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science
On the north side of Diagonal, next to the Faculty of Economics and Business, the UB will erect a 14,000 square meter building that will become the new headquarters of the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science. Currently, the faculty shares spaces with the Faculty of Philology and Communication in the university's Historic Building, in Plaça Universitat. The center currently has more than 1,600 students and a team of 160 professionals, including teaching and research staff and technical, management, administration, and services staff. Its academic offer includes five bachelor's degrees, five university master's degrees, and a doctoral program.
The design of this facility, signed by the offices Barceló-Balanzó Arquitectes and Magén Arquitectos, is articulated in two volumes. A four-story block will concentrate the research spaces, while a nine-story tower will house the faculty's dependencies, with classrooms, laboratories, and collaborative work areas, in addition to having an underground floor that will connect with the current Economics and Business Library.
In addition to classrooms and laboratories, the new building also aims to be an example of energy efficiency. The design will take into account the use of natural light and ventilation and will incorporate renewable energy generation systems, such as photovoltaic panels and geothermal and aerothermal installations. The combination of these solutions should allow for maximum reduction of energy consumption and bring the building closer to a nearly zero consumption model.
More laboratories for health research
On the other side of Diagonal, on the south side, the UB will expand the facilities of the Barcelona Science Park with a new 10,000 square meter building. The park, which has 100,000 square meters of surface distributed in eight buildings, has been working at full capacity for months. Currently, it houses some 3,600 workers and a hundred companies and entities, so the new construction will allow responding to the growing demand for research spaces. A need that will also gain weight with the future arrival of the Clínic and the development of the new health hub on Diagonal.
To erect the new facility, the current headquarters of the School of New Interactive Technologies (ENTI) will be demolished. In its place, a building with a ground floor and six upper floors will be constructed, primarily intended for research in health sciences. Among the future occupants will be the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), which is already installed at the PCB and is experiencing a period of growth; the Fraunhofer center, which will establish its first headquarters in Spain there, and other research activities linked to the UB.
The architectural project, by PMMT Forward Thinking Healthcare Architecture and 080Arquitectura, has been conceived based on a modular structure that will allow adapting the spaces to the needs of laboratories and research groups. Specifically, the facilities will be organized into modules of about 90 square meters around a central atrium. This distribution seeks to facilitate the reorganization of spaces and promote interaction between scientific teams, two important factors for fostering collaboration between disciplines.
A new centrality around the future Clínic
The two new UB buildings are part of a strategy to reinforce the university and scientific weight of Diagonal, where some of the city's main research facilities are already concentrated. The rector of the UB, Joan Guàrdia, highlighted, during the presentation of these two new facilities, the dimension of this process and announced that, when the new facilities are completed, "80% of the activity of the University of Barcelona will take place in this area."
The central piece of this transformation will be the future Clínic-UB Health Campus, which will be built on the grounds of the current university sports area and will integrate healthcare, teaching, and research in a new urban environment. The project, however, goes beyond hospital facilities: it foresees up to 1,125 homes —325 in Barcelona and 800 in l'Hospitalet, half of which are protected— and 22 hectares of green spaces.
The president of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, framed the project within a long-range urban transformation, which should allow "converting a border area into a meeting area" at the entrance of Diagonal. Illa also championed the role of "science and research in the face of denialism."
When these two UB buildings come into operation in 2029, the future Clínic-UB Health Campus will still be far from being a complete reality. But the transformation of Diagonal will have already taken a first step: the area will have new spaces for teaching and research, and will have begun to consolidate itself as a knowledge hub where disciplines such as mathematics, computer science, and health sciences will coexist.