The Ciutadella del Coneixement has started. The initiative that aims to transform this area of the city into a new scientific hub has laid its first stone this Thursday in what years ago was the city's old Central Fish Market with a broad institutional representation, including representatives from the Barcelona City Council, the Generalitat, and the Government. This marks the kick-off of the works for the first three research centers that have been projected, the germ that is expected to revitalize a park that has been somewhat forgotten. With an investment of 104 million euros, higher than the initially planned 93 million euros, the works are expected to finish by the end of 2025.
The institutions responsible for developing this first phase are the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST), and the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC). The Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE), promoted by the UPF and the CSIC, will develop a center dedicated to biodiversity research. The university will also develop a center dedicated to planetary well-being, in addition to reinforcing its annexed campus, which houses the faculties of Law, Economics, Political Science, and Humanities. Finally, BIST, with the largest and tallest building, will focus on precision medicine.
More than 1,200 researchers will be concentrated in this research complex, known as Mercat del Peix. It will be built on a 7,500 square meter plot of land that in recent years had been occupied by an open-air parking lot. The works to build the three new buildings have been delayed. The municipal company B:SM, which managed the parking lot, will be in charge of starting the works, excavating this land to build another parking lot that will be located below the future buildings of the UPF, the CSIC, and the BIST. It will be the first to be developed under a new concept that integrates mobility services beyond parking spaces for cars, such as parking areas for bikes and scooters, chargers for electric cars, or lockers for picking up online orders.
Another piece that is already defined is how the research centers will be, after having resolved the respective architectural competitions. The Barcelona studio Barozzi Veiga will be in charge of the BIST building, with an area of 24,700 square meters distributed over eight floors. It will house some 800 researchers and about sixty research groups from four centers, specifically the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2) and the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB).
The IBE and UPF buildings will be carried out by the team formed by the Californian studio ZGF Architects and the Barcelona offices Mirag and Double Twist, and will be co-financed by the Government. The IBE building, with 6,500 square meters distributed over five floors, will bring together 250 researchers, expanding the staff previously distributed in two centers, while the UPF building, with 7,300 square meters and three floors, will bring together some 150 researchers. Incasòl will be in charge of its construction and the urbanization of the area between the three buildings, investing 18 million euros.
A few weeks ago, before staging the start of the works, one of the institutions involved, the CSIC, defined a new leg of the Ciutadella del Coneixement with the announcement of locating two institutes very close to this first research complex. The Government plans to build a building on a plot of land belonging to the Government Delegation of Catalonia, on Doctor Trueta street, where there is a headquarters of the State Mobile Park, an organization in charge of managing vehicles for the representation of high-ranking government officials and the Head of State. There will also be a scientific services center and offices of the Government Delegation. To make this possible, the modification of the Metropolitan General Plan is pending. Currently, the land is classified as a green area.
Open the park to the city and make it greener
Research will not be the only way to revitalize the park and its surroundings. The Ciutadella del Coneixement aims to create a new centrality in this area of the city facing the sea, affecting a total of 300,000 square meters. The goal is to promote knowledge, but also to open the park to the city, both through the walls that separate it from the university campus and the obstacles on the way to the sea, and to make it greener; to rehabilitate the historic buildings in the park, such as the Hivernacle; the promotion of the Barcelona Zoo as a center for the study and conservation of biological diversity, and the construction of the new state public library next to Estación de França.
For this reason, the groundbreaking ceremony was attended by the mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau; the Minister of Universities, Joan Subirats, the Minister of Science and Innovation, Diana Morant, and the President of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, as well as other institutions beyond those involved in the construction of the first research complex. This Thursday, the Universitat de Barcelona (UB), the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and the Pasqual Maragall Foundation participated, but the initiative also appeals to others already established in the area, such as the Institut de Ciències del Mar, the Hospital del Mar, ISGlobal, the Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), the Parlament de Catalunya, the Museu del Disseny, the Museu de Ciències Naturals, the Museu de Cultures del Món, the Museu Picasso or the Born Centre Cultural.