The Diagonal-Besòs Campus opens a park and grows with a building for entrepreneurs

This week is yielding good results for the Diagonal-Besòs Campus of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), located between the municipalities of Barcelona and Sant Adrià de Besòs. After the Institut Català del Sòl (Incasòl) announced on Monday the architecture competition to build a new research building, rector Francesc Torres presided this Wednesday over the groundbreaking of another new building, which will house SMEs, startups, and co-working spaces, and the inauguration of the new park.

Works to construct this building for SMEs and startups will begin this March, with an approximate duration of 24 months. Around 800 workers are expected to participate in the construction, and the project budget is 16 million euros.

This building, located on plot E of the campus, will have the capacity to accommodate around 700 people. Companies emerging from the 41 research groups present on campus will be able to locate there, although it will also be open to those working in the same research areas. The project aims to facilitate the transfer of knowledge from the university to industry. To do so, it proposes a co-working format where entrepreneurs and professionals can set up, sharing common spaces to foster multidisciplinary and networked work.

On the other hand, the park inaugurated this Wednesday will serve to connect the La Mina rambla with Port Fòrum, in addition to opening sea access to both the university community and residents of Sant Adrià and Barcelona. With more than 20,000 square meters, it has become the main green and leisure area of the zone, featuring a playground and a football and basketball court. The project budget was 3.6 million euros. The existing underpass beneath the Ronda Litoral towards Carrer de la Pau and Avinguda de Francesc Botey has also been improved.

The Diagonal-Besòs Campus started its activity in September 2016, with 3,500 students and 400 teachers and researchers from the Escola d'Enginyeria de Barcelona Est (EEBE), the main driving force of this space. It offers seven bachelor's degrees, five master's degrees, and four doctorates, focused on biomedical, electrical, industrial electronics and automation, energy, mechanical, chemical, and materials engineering.

Currently, there are four buildings in operation: one for teaching (building A on the map), two research buildings (C and I), and the residence for students, researchers, and teachers (H). The building for SMEs and companies that will begin construction this month will be E, and the new research building, which now starts with the architecture competition called by Incasòl, will be D. Likewise, this year it is also planned to start defining another building, on plots L and M, which will serve to house the Barcelona Energia project and UPC's continuing education, and to transfer entrepreneurship activities from Barcelona Activa. With more than 150,000 square meters of buildable area, once the project is fully developed, the campus will have 13 buildings and a community of 15,000 people.

Replicating the campus's success

The mayor of Sant Adrià, Joan Callau, has defended the need to replicate the success of the institutional collaboration that has allowed the promotion of the Diagonal-Besòs Campus of the UPC to other initiatives being developed in Barcelonès Nord, such as the transformation of the Tres Xemeneies. Callau emphasized that his city, Badalona, and Santa Coloma de Gramenet share "streets and problems," with high levels of unemployment and lack of training for the youngest.

That is why he has asked those present, including the mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau; the deputy mayor for Urban Planning, Janet Sanz, and the Minister of Business and Knowledge, Ramon Tremosa, for more collaboration and less competition to make projects that overcome the paralysis of this area a reality. For their part, both Colau and Sanz, as well as Tremosa, have also highlighted the complicity that exists between the different administrations to continue betting on this campus and the Besòs.