The usual comparisons to make the dimensions of a space understandable use soccer fields or Olympic swimming pools. We could then talk about ten Olympic swimming pools or two soccer fields, but those responsible for the construction project of the new Fira de Barcelona pavilion prefer to use an even more gigantic comparison: an entire Eixample block, with its 110 meters in length on each side. , with its interior, its main features, its lifts... Absolutely everything that is in a block of Eixample could be moved into the future pavilion, baptized as Hall Zero, which will turn the Gran Via de l'Hospitalet venue into one of the largest – as well as modern – in all of Europe.
The foundation works have already begun on a huge plot of land located near Plaza Europa that Porcelanosa had occupied in recent years. During the recent celebration of the Smart City Expo World Congress exhibition, the constant rumble of the machines at work could be heard and this will also be the case at the next ISE audiovisual fair at the end of January and Mobile at the end of February, the two gigantic professional congresses that have promoted expansion because they are already big but they still want to be bigger in the future. Furthermore, with the added space it is expected to capture new events and conferences, as well as combine several of them over time since the new pavilion is next to the other but at the same time separated, which will allow very different things to be celebrated at the same time.
When the expansion becomes a reality, throughout 2026, Fira de Barcelona will add more than 60,000 square meters of exhibition space distributed over two floors to the 240,000 offered by the eight current pavilions, with which it will be connected by an elevated walkway. In addition, it will have a fourteen-story office building that will be acquired by the Generalitat to transfer public workers there, just as it already did in the administrative campus located just at the other end of the fairgrounds, on the Zona Franca promenade.
The architectural complex bears the signature of Toyo Ito and the Fermín Vázquez architecture studio (b720), who have finally decided to concentrate the 24,000 square meters of office space in a single, larger and better utilized tower instead of two smaller towers. as initially anticipated. Fira 2000, as promoter of the project, has also dispensed with the public space and the restaurant area on the upper terrace that had been initially planned and will limit its access only to the workers who are assigned there, as well as the congressmen who attend. to the gigantic pavilion or to the adjacent congress area.
What has not changed is the pavilion itself, which will have two floors and has been designed with a scale and size that make it one of the most unique exhibition spaces in the world, both for the result and for the way it is built. Its purely diaphanous approach, without pillars, will mean that the roof will be built with a spatial mesh that will rise above the structure, as the Japanese Arata Isozaki did at the time in the Palau Sant Jordi.
This particularity allows us to resort to another comparison complementary to that of the Eixample: an airplane that could fit perfectly into the new pavilion thanks to its structure without pillars, as if it were a large hangar. Or Sant Jordi itself, whose dimensions are also smaller than this new space, called to be the jewel in the crown of Fira de Barcelona after an investment of 323 million euros, which will be borne by the different administrations involved.
The laying of the first stone this Monday has been a show of agreement and consensus vision of all of them. “It is not just the expansion of the venue, it is the expansion of opportunities for the next generations of Catalans,” said the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, who has headed the broad institutional representation of which the mayor of Barcelona was a part. , Jaume Collboni; the mayor of l'Hospitalet, Núria Marín; the president of the Barcelona Provincial Council, Lluïsa Moret; the president of the Chamber, Josep Santacreu; and the president of Fira de Barcelona, Pau Relat. They all took a shovel to lay the first stone. The ISE audiovisual exhibition or the Mobile, at the beginning of 2027, are called to be the congresses that inaugurate the new space.
