Urban planning project

The project for the Antic Mercat del Peix consists of the creation of a new research and innovation complex of some 45,400 m².

The Antic Mercat del Peix project is one of the initiatives within the Citadel of Knowledge, supported institutionally by the Barcelona City Council, the Generalitat of Catalonia, the Government of Spain, the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), the University of Barcelona (UB), the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), the Pasqual Maragall Foundation (FPM), the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park (PRBB), and the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST).

The area, where a public underground car park and the foundations of the buildings are currently being built, is owned by the Barcelona City Council and UPF. It covers an area of about 7,000 m², and the architectural project plans to construct three new buildings with a total floor area of over 45,400 m². With planned investment of €166 million, this new knowledge hub will be operational in 2028.

The Citadel of Knowledge

The Antic Mercat del Peix project is one of the first actions of the Citadel of Knowledge, a scientific, cultural and urban initiative that aims to turn the surroundings of Citadel park, in the centre of Barcelona, into an urban benchmark knowledge hub in southern Europe.

In the surroundings of Citadel park we already find some forty prestigious public and private institutions in the fields of research, innovation, higher education and culture. Their activity includes a wide range of areas of knowledge: biology and health, biodiversity, social sciences, and humanities.

The Citadel of Knowledge will attract new national and international institutions to this area, institutions recognized for their excellence and relevance in research and innovation, which will join the existing critical mass to increase inter-institutional synergies and promote interdisciplinary initiatives.

The architectural project consists of four perfectly synergistic subprojects, which are:

• A new building of the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park (PRBB)
• A new building for the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE, CSIC-UPF)
• A new building for Pompeu Fabra University (UPF)
• A new underground parking, built and managed by the company Barcelona Serveis Municipals (B:SM)

The planned investment in the construction of the Antic Mercat del Peix buildings is around €166 million, broken down as follows:

Work on the Antic Mercat del Peix project is being executed in several phases:

• The works on the car park and the building foundations began in February 2023 and are expected to be completed in January 2026.
   
• The construction of the PRBB building is scheduled to begin in March 2026 and is expected to be completed in March 2028.
   
• The construction of the IBE and UPF buildings is scheduled to begin in June 2026 and is expected to be completed in March 2028.

The Barcelona-based studio Barozzi Veiga won the international architecture contest convened by the BIST to design and build the new building, which received a total of 34 submissions.

The winning studio was founded in 2004 in Barcelona by Fabrizzio Barozzi and Alberto Veiga and has received numerous awards including the Mies van der Rohe award for Contemporary Architecture in 2015 for the Szczecin Philharmonic Hall (Poland). In 2019 they were awarded “Best Architects 20” and the Chicago Atheneum International Award for the Bündner Museum of Fine Arts in Chur (Switzerland). Other outstanding buildings by the studio that have received extensive international recognition are the Tanzhaus cultural centre in Zürich and the Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts in Lausanne. The PRBB building will be the first to be built by the Barozzi Veiga team in Barcelona.

The new building, which will house more than 900 researchers, will bring together research groups from five research centres (IRB Barcelona, IBEC, ICN2, CRG and ICFO). It will have a floor area of 24,000 m², distributed in eight storeys, devoted to multidisciplinary research precision medicine. 

The team made up of the California-based firm ZGF Architects and the Barcelona studios MIRAG and Double Twist won the international architecture competition launched by the CSIC and UPF to design and construct the new buildings, which received 41 submissions.

The competition envisages two buildings. The first of these two buildings, which will be at the UPF, shall be three stories high, have a total floor area of 8,000 square meters, and be dedicated to research on and innovation for society well-being. The goal is to make it a meeting point for researchers drawn from the experimental sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities, with a view to carrying out interdisciplinary projects in the following areas: youth, justice and resilience through technology, community and knowledge connectors.

The second building will have a total floor area of 6,400 square meters — split over five floors — and host the headquarters of the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE), a joint research centre created in 2008 by the UPF and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). The IBE will site all its research staff at its new Antic Mercat del Peix facilities, where it will consolidate and expand its research project on Evolution and Biodiversity, with the goal of consolidating its position as a leading international research centre.

Barcelona de Serveis Municipals, S.A. (B:SM) will build and manage the new car park on the 2^nd basement floor of the Antic Mercat del Peix ,“Citadel of Knowledge”, which will be integrated into the B:SM Network of car parks, which currently exploits 44 for public use.

This car park, whose construction is set to begin in February 2023, is designed as a hub of mobility services thanks to the commitment by B:SM to contribute to improving mobility in Barcelona based on sustainable, healthy, efficient, connected and shared solutions that respond to the new patterns of consumption.

With a floor area of almost 7,000 square meters, it will offer an electromobility service provided by Endolla Barcelona, the widest network in Spain. Also carsharing services provided by multi-operator vehicle fleets; a large space for exclusive use by cyclists and personal mobility vehicle users; Click & Collect services to pick up and return parcels from online purchases, and a Delivery Station Points service managed by last-mile microdistribution operators.

The future Antic Mercat del Peix buildings will include integrated water, waste and energy management solutions, prioritizing the environment, reducing energy demand and the global ecological footprint, limiting noise and environmental pollution and geared towards sustainable mobility. The goal is to go beyond sustainable buildings and achieve regenerative buildings that serve as a reference for future buildings in an environmentally friendly, environment-integrated city.

Hence, the architectural project for the Antic Mercat del Peix complex envisages the closure of material cycles, i.e., the conversion of waste into resources, to head in the direction of self-sufficiency. 

To achieve this, the architectural project will take into account the use of recycled and recyclable materials, the limited generation of waste, the minimization of the economic footprint of buildings, the reduction of water and energy demand, and the introduction of active and passive bioclimatic systems.

The planned volumetric arrangement of the architectural units to be built will incorporate criteria that will improve bioclimatic behaviour, taking advantage of natural light, favouring cross ventilation and heat dissipation, incorporating vegetation that generates a favourable microclimate taking the greenhouse effect into account.