The future Barcelona Hub of Art, Science and Technology will seek to interconnect and encourage collaboration between these sectors and different institutions, whether they are companies, research centers, universities, exhibition spaces or centers for artistic production or innovation. The way to do this will be by promoting research, production, dissemination and knowledge transfer with transversal programs, or organizing artist residencies in large scientific, social and educational infrastructures.
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The intersections between art, science and technology must serve to strengthen the digital transformation that is taking place in the city of Barcelona from multiple perspectives. The new project aims to enhance the relationship between fields that do not usually coincide, such as artistic and scientific-technical, with the aim of learning together and discovering new processes and ways of approaching challenges from each other.
This will be one of the initiatives that will opt for European funds and is expected to be developed between 2021 and 2024. It will be done with the support of the Barcelona City Council, the Generalitat and the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce, and nine other entities. Specifically, the Artech Hub is made up of the Open University of Catalonia (UOC), the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), Fira de Barcelona, the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO), the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), Barcelona Tech City, Hangar, the New Art Foundation and the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST).
The choice of its location is not casual: the Palau Alfons XIII, ceded by Fira de Barcelona, one of the partner entities of the initiative, and which is to be restored. The aim is thus to connect the major technological trade fair events held in Barcelona, such as the Mobile World Congress (MWC), with the city's artistic and creative community, as well as to draw on the surrounding cultural environment, with the MNAC, the Fundació Mies Van der Rohe, the Fundació Miró, the CaixaForum, the Museu d'Arqueologia de Catalunya or the Mercat de les Flors.
Once restored, the Palau Alfons XIII, flanking the Font Màgica de Montjuïc, will serve to host a research center, an accelerator for creative companies, laboratories, and workshops for the artistic community. With an area of 7,200 square meters, it is also expected to include showrooms for the presentation of projects or works, and host dissemination activities.
Network of hubs in Barcelona
The new center joins a long list of hubs that are being promoted in Barcelona in recent weeks. Recently, the creation of a financial technology hub that will occupy the entire building of the Barcelona Stock Exchange or a Health hub in Via Laietana and an urban mobility and logistics hub in the Correos building has been announced.
All of them will be integrated into the urban campus that the Barcelona Tech City association is promoting in the city, with the aim of placing it at the forefront of leading capitals for technology startups, from the perspective of different sectors. With different approaches and collaborators, these hubs want to replicate the success of Pier 01, a building inaugurated in 2016 that has been a turning point for Barcelona's entrepreneurial ecosystem.
In an interview in The New Barcelona Post, the CEO of Barcelona Tech City, Miquel Martí, explained that European funds could serve to accelerate the expansion of this urban campus, creating more buildings like Pier 01 in sectors such as arttech, fintech, mobility and logistics, health, sports, urbantech, marketing... Weeks later, many of them are already beginning to have a clearer horizon.