HP inaugurates a global digital design center at its Sant Cugat facilities

To a 14th-century farmhouse, which had been part of the Monastery of Sant Cugat and had been occupied by feudal lords, designers from all over the world will arrive to devise, for example, the digital images seen on computer screens and HP screens, as well as the appearance of applications to launch and use them. Until recently, some of the more than 2,500 workers at this immense business headquarters were not aware that there was a space with so much history so close to their offices, even though many of them take advantage of breaks to go running around the complex. The building is located on one side of the large esplanade occupied by the multinational in the Barcelona municipality, with almost 300 hectares, and had been unoccupied until now.

When the company settled there in the late eighties, the whole area still maintained a wild character, as Ramon Pastor, general director of HP's International Center in Barcelona, the most important complex the group has outside the United States, recalls. The few employees who started working at that time had to close the windows because flies would come in, Pastor points out, when they were still surrounded by farms and a lot of forest. It all started with some offices and a factory nestled in an immense plot of land that now totals 11 buildings, and is accompanied by many more companies.

From HP, they didn't know what to do with that abandoned farmhouse within their grounds, whose facade had been renovated in 2014 and was more accompanied since 2019 by a new building located next to it, the global headquarters for 3D printing. This was until the Sant Cugat campus became the chosen one by the group to host the global digital design centerIt was thematchperfect", remarks Pastor. It had to be taken into account that this newhubwill have to compete with other companies and capitals to attract highly demanded professionals, so the aim was to reinforce the offer with Barcelona's creative tradition and do so from a different space. "Our commitment to Barcelona is clear. Sant Cugat today strengthens its capabilities," explains the general director of HP Iberia, Inés Bermejo. The newhubHP's innovation will serve to centralize the different design studios that the group had around the world,with the function of conceiving, designing, and developing new digital solutions to improve user experience. The multinational also has one in Palo Alto (California), with a hundred workers. The American center will coexist with the one in Sant Cugat, but the latter will be the one to lead the division and grow.HP's Masía already employs 20 workers and is expected to grow to 80 in the next two years.For Pastor, it is important to value design and not think so much about software, taking into account that designers are the ones who conceive how solutions will be and transmit the orders to execute them. The group does not reveal the investment involved in setting up the eleventh building of the Sant Cugat headquarters, but reports that it received 200,000 euros in aid from Acció.In addition to being an innovation center, the old Can Graells farmhouse will serve as a cultural center and debuts this week as the venue for Barcelona Design Week. "This doesn't stop," warns Pastor, "from Barcelona we lead the future of the company and many of the challenges it faces."