To make a leap in scale and "conquer Europe". This is the objective with which LCI Barcelona is finalizing its new campus, with which it aims to attract 3,000 students, a large part of them from the international sphere. After an investment of 35 million and three years of construction, the campus will become operational next academic year, with 11,000 square meters just a few meters from the Disseny Hub.
With its new facilities, LCI Barcelona aspires to position itself as a benchmark in higher education in design and visual arts, also within the international network of LCI Education of which it is a part. "We want to turn the school into the European hub of the network," proclaimed the director of the center, Silvia Viudas, in conversation with The New Barcelona Post. Currently, LCI Education has 12 higher education institutions distributed across five continents. With the new campus, the Barcelona center aims to play a fundamental role within the LCI network.
Specifically, the school's new facilities are located at the intersection of Àlaba and Sancho d'Àvila streets, a few blocks from the transformed Glòries. LCI Barcelona announced in mid-2022 the promotion of this campus, of sustainable construction and equipped with new technologies aimed at its students, after it sold its own land to an investment fund, which has promoted the project, and acquired the adjacent one to complete its facilities.
LCI Barcelona aims to triple its students in two years with the new campusThe academic center currently has about a thousand students, and with the new campus it will expand its capacity to nearly 3,000. "We give ourselves two years to fill it," says Viudas. Of the total number of students LCI currently has, about 40% are international, a figure that climbs to 80% in the case of master's degrees. With this data and the forecasts for the new campus, the center estimates that its international students will generate an impact of 41 million in five years in the city.
The campus wants to attract these students through its educational offerings and campus facilities, which will feature 50 classrooms and spaces for workshops, design laboratories, and a large hall conceived as an agora for students to reflect on the development of their projects. With a cafeteria on the ground floor, the construction of the campus has included the urbanization of a 2,000 square meter green space, which has been designed through a process of neighborhood participation.
The origin of the project goes way back: the seed dates back to 1928, when the pioneer Felicidad Duce founded her fashion school-workshop in Gràcia. Her method gained such prestige that it ended up acquiring its own name, and the Feli Method made its way through the decades. It was 85 years later when the school was acquired in 2013 by the LCI Education network, with which it acquired a European campus dimension. "At that time, from the school we were looking to expand capital to grow, and it was a direct match," says Sílvia Viudas, then already at the helm of Felicidad Duce.
Since joining the Canadian network, LCI Barcelona has preserved the essence and know-how of Felicidad Duce, and has added new creative areas: it offers training in fashion, but also in graphic design, interior and product design, as well as photography, animation and video games. According to Viudas, who has 22 years at Felicidad Duce, these new areas have broadened the school's scope without breaking with the legacy of its founder, who stood as a defender of the professionalization of fashion and the freedom of women: "The essence of Felicidad Duce is still there."
LCI Education chose Barcelona in 2013 for the same reason it has now chosen to boost its campus as a European hub: for its student flow, the city's activity, its projection and its international connectivity.
The Barcelona of a decade ago has given way to a city "that wants to be a benchmark in creative industries," according to Viudas. "Schools like ours boost the sector and can act as a differentiator for Barcelona," in a process in which the business and educational ecosystem plays a fundamental role.
The center estimates that its international students will generate 41 million in five years in the cityAnd this ecosystem is also fundamental for LCI Barcelona, which has moved to the new campus from its headquarters on Balmes street, where it settled in 2015 coming from Gràcia. JJust a decade later, it moves again, multiplying its surface area and services. It also multiplies its team, which is already operating from the new campus: a staff previously made up of a dozen people has grown to about 70, plus about 400 professors. All of them will work from a "very active 22@ with a strong desire to generate synergies."
"Going to 22@ opens up millions of possibilities for us," proclaims Viudas, who predicts that the new campus will turn LCI Barcelona into a prominent point in the LCI Education network. The business dynamism of the school's environment and of Barcelona in general is also key for another of the center's objectives, which argues that "international students should not come to study and leave, but rather that talent can be retained in Barcelona."
In this Barcelona ecosystem, sectors directly linked to LCI Barcelona are gaining weight, such as the video game sector, and also in the field of creative industries in general. "Our institution can contribute to supporting Barcelona's positioning as a center of creativity, and we can offer talent to nourish it," guarantees Viudas, who proclaims that "positioning oneself in the field of creative industries is a city's commitment."