The Eina design school will open a new center in Collserola

The history of Eina has been linked for years to the Sarrià neighborhood. When it was created in the late sixties by a group of intellectuals, including Federico Correa, this private design school was located in the Casa Dolcet, a work by the modernist architect Joan Rubió, which was on Avenida de Vallvidrera. Over the years, the building became too small and Eina moved in 1994 to the Palacio de los Marqueses de Sentmenat, on Paseo de Santa Eulàlia, a little further down from Avenida de Vallvidrera.

Now, 27 years later, it is expanding its facilities in Sarrià after the center in the Palacio de los Marqueses de Sentmenat had also become too small for them. The university center considered opening a new space in Poblenou or in the Cultural District of L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, but opted to continue in this Barcelona neighborhood, explains its director, Pau de Solà-Morales, after having already opened a new space in Ciutat Vella in 2006, dedicated to exhibitions.

Eina Bosc, the name of the new center, will occupy a building that was owned by the Generalitat and had previously been a youth center, very close to Eina's current location and next to the Ferrocarrils de Peu del Funicular station, in Collserola Park. Rehabilitation works will have to be carried out, which have a budget of 1.5 million euros and are expected to be finished in February 2022.

The new building has an area of 1,500 square meters, the same as the center in the Palacio de los Marqueses de Sentmenat. The latter currently has a capacity for 500 students and Eina Bosc will serve to decongest it. It has been conceived as a space where the workshops of this university center, attached to the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), will be located, offering a degree in Design, postgraduate and master's degrees, and a doctorate. These activities have more space needs than a teaching classroom and it is estimated that the capacity of Eina Bosc will be between 200 and 300 students. Eina carries out all kinds of workshops, such as screen printing, artistic creation or photography, and is working to develop an audiovisual creation one.

Students and professors participate in the conception of the space

While the official inauguration does not arrive, once the works are finished, the new Eina building is now "a space under construction," says Solà-Morales, with faculty and students gradually making it their own. For example, Eina has included its definition in two subjects, furniture design and graphic design applied to space. In this sense, this week it will host the presentation of almost 90 final degree projects by Design students, who will have to exhibit and defend them before a jury in this new location.

Likewise, the construction of the building itself will be accompanied by a series of artistic interventions and performances organized by Eina Idea, the think tank of the Eina foundation. This ideas laboratory was created to "take art and design education beyond its usual languages." In Eina Bosc, several invited agents from Barcelona's artistic and creative community will carry out interventions in collaboration with Eina students, and among them are artists Sergi Aguilar, Julia Spínola, Marc Vives and Pep Vidal, and the collectives Sociedad 0 and MAIO. "The vocation of this program will be to activate the spaces, their structure and their memory, as well as to generate key ideas for later phases of construction and also implementation," says the director of Eina Idea, Manuel Cirauqui.

Connected with nature

As its name indicates, the new building will have a special connection with nature. Its proximity to Collserola Park will translate into nature as the protagonist of many of the design school's activities in the coming years. Among them, it is planned to develop green spaces that give continuity to the park, as well as the integration of values such as sustainability and circular ecology into the artistic and design activities carried out in the workshops.