The sea and the coast are, without a doubt, some of Barcelona's hallmarks. However, in recent years the city has shown that the sea also has the power to become one of its economic engines. An economic sector, that of the so-called blue economy, which is growing in the Catalan capital and which the Port of Barcelona intends to boost even further with the well-known BlueTechPort, a hub from which projects related to the sea will be accelerated and promoted. The objective is for this space to be a reality by 2028, once the renovation of the old sheds on the Sant Bertran dock has been completed.
With this completion date on the horizon, the Port of Barcelona is already working to shape this ambitious project. Thus, the Board of Directors of the World Trade Center (WTC) has resolved the tender for the works and has decided to award its construction to the Temporary Union of Companies formed by COMSA SAU, VOPI4 SA and COMSA Instalaciones y Sistemas SAU, a candidacy that obtained the highest score among the seven applicants.
With a budget of 52.3 million euros, the works will renovate the old warehouses on the Sant Bertran dock into a single and iconic building of 25,700 square meters with the capacity to accommodate 2,500 employees. The forecast is that these works can begin this November and last for two and a half years, with the aim of completing them by 2028.
The renovation project is signed by the Barcelona firm b720 Fermín Vázquez Arquitectos. A project that will maintain the gantry structure of the six bays of the old warehouses, as a symbol of the port's past in this space, but connecting them to each other with an interior rambla. The objective, thus, is to preserve the original metal structure and the existing facades, reducing the costs and environmental impact that their demolition would entail.
Sustainability, thus, stands as another of the fundamental pillars of this new space, which will use materials that generate a low carbon footprint and that, furthermore, will be reusable or dismountable. Likewise, it will also incorporate marine geothermal systems and photovoltaic panels, solutions that will allow covering up to 40% of the energy demand.
The project opts for tempered spaces with interior vegetation, with low water demand, which will allow reducing irrigation water consumption by up to 70%, by reusing gray and rainwater. The building also plans an indoor and outdoor agora, laboratories, training rooms, exhibition spaces, and an auditorium.
However, innovation will go beyond the four walls of this sustainable and novel building, moving directly to the sea. Thus, the BlueTechPort will become an authentic urban laboratory that will allow testing new prototypes and technologies in their real environment before bringing them to market, in a 50-linear-meter testing space on the Barcelona pier, next to the World Trade Center.
The objective is for the building as a whole to become a space for innovation and acceleration of blue economy projects, hosting everything from startups, scaleups, accelerators, research centers, or international organizations related to this sector, which will be deployed over an area of more than 25,000 square meters. Currently, more than 15 startups, two research centers, and various organizations related to the blue economy are already part of the BlueTechPort ecosystem.
These companies already located in the BlueTechPort—among which international companies such as the American Braid Theory stand out, alongside local projects such as Ocean Ecostructures or the Barcelona Nautical Cluster—, which until now were installed in one of the old warehouses on the Sant Bertran pier, have moved to the World Trade Center so that work can begin next month.