The jury of the architectural competition for the buildings of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) and the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE) in the Mercat del Peix complex has proposed as the winner the proposal presented by the team formed by the Californian studio ZGF Architects and the Barcelona law firms MIRAG and Double Twist.
The competition provides for two buildings. The first of these two buildings, which will be the UPF building, will have a total of 7,300 square meters and will be three stories high, and will be dedicated to research and innovation for planetary well-being.
This building intends to become, in the future, a meeting point for researchers, coming from both experimental sciences and social sciences and the humanities, who will develop interdisciplinary projects in fields such as planetary health, complex systems and data science. , artificial intelligence, the economy and governance of climate change, the loss of biodiversity or global law and governance.
The other building, measuring 6,500 square meters distributed over five floors, will house the headquarters of the Institute of Evolutionary Biology, a mixed research center created in 2008 by the UPF and the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC). The IBE will bring together all its research staff at the new headquarters of the Mercat del Peix.
The two buildings will form part of the new research space of the Mercat del Peix, next to the UPF Ciutadella campus, together with the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST) building. The 24,700-square-meter BIST building, which will be built based on the project drawn up by the Barozzi Veiga studio, will be dedicated to multidisciplinary research in precision medicine.
The competition jury, chaired by Jaume Casals, rector of the UPF between the years 2013 and 2021, was formed by two representatives of the CSIC, the chief architect of Barcelona City Council, the manager of Incasòl, two architects appointed by the College of Architects of Catalonia and an engineer designated for the College of Industrial Engineers of Catalonia.
The president of the jury has highlighted that the project achieves "the urban balance and the joint understanding of the area that goes from the library of the Depósito de las Aguas to the Hospital del Mar, together with the brilliance and daring of the style that a project deserves that aspires to be vital for the social development of the city and the country”.
For his part, the rector of the UPF, Oriol Amat, stressed that "the Fish Market is called to be a true world point of reference in research for and for planetary well-being".
According to the rector, “this project once again places UPF and the universities involved in the project in the world's leading group in research. A total of 41 teams from 10 countries participated in the contest, held in June 2021. Of these 41 teams, and in accordance with the criteria established in the competition, the jury chose five, which were asked for a specific proposal for the buildings promoted by the UPF and the CSIC. In addition to the winning team, made up of the ZFG Architects, MIRAG and Double Twist studios, the other four teams that competed in the second phase were the Girona firm Camps Felip Arquitectura together with the Irish studio Allies
