With today's reopening of the restored Hivernacle, the Ciutadella del Coneixement project begins to take shape and become visible, an ambitious plan to reconvert the historic Barcelona park and its surroundings into one of the most powerful science and innovation centers in Europe.
It took 15 months of work and around 2.5 million euros to recover one of the emblematic buildings that are the vestige of the International Exhibition of 1888. A very detailed restoration has allowed us to recover the original spirit of this Barcelona glass palace, which had been lost after long years of closure, deterioration of the facilities and previous renovations that had hidden some elements that now regain all their splendor.
The inauguration ceremony of the renovated Hivernacle has brought together representatives of various municipal political forces led by the current mayor, Jaume Collboni, the former mayor Xavier Trias and the former first deputy mayor, Janet Sanz, under whose mandate the rehabilitation of this unique space began. .
The recovery of the Hivernacle is the first piece of one of the most ambitious projects that Barcelona has underway, that of the Ciutadella del Coneixement, which is structured around the city's central park. In this territory dedicated to science, the product of the collaboration of different public administrations, universities and various research centers, nearly 2,000 researchers will work. This will require an estimated investment of around 290 million euros, of which Barcelona City Council contributes around 75 million.
The restored Hivernacle, the work of the late 19th century municipal architect Josep Amargós, is one of the four historical pieces located in the Ciutadella park that will form part of the Ciutadella del Coneixement project. Tomorrow the Museu Martorell, the oldest public museum in Barcelona, which has also been rehabilitated, will be officially inaugurated – there are still some details that will delay the official reopening ceremony for a few weeks. To take advantage of these Christmas holidays, this facility, now renamed Center Martorell d'Expositions, will now open to host two exhibitions: Nature or Culture?, a vision of the Museum of Natural Sciences, and Wow. Museum animals, about science, technology and art.
The park's two other historic buildings dedicated to science will also be rehabilitated. The Castell dels Trens Dragons, one of the signature works of the great modernist architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner, has the project almost ready to then undertake works that should be completed in 2026. Also for that year it is expected that the Hivernacle's sister building, the Umbracle, which has remained open all these years, and which requires less extensive works.
The Hivernacle once again shows all its romantic beauty after having replaced the windows, the lighting system and the interior irrigation and having recovered original paintings and decorations that were not taken into account in the last facelift to which it underwent, which dates back to to 2007.
The Hivernacle will be open every day from 10 in the morning until dusk. Other uses other than those related to science and its dissemination have been initially ruled out. The first exhibition that it will host, at the beginning of 2024, is titled Màquina Climàtica.
The glass palace of Ciutadella and the other three historic buildings in the park are just one of the pieces that will make up the Ciutadella del Coneixement. Barcelona City Council has a special interest in ensuring that most of this project is fully operational during the municipal mandate that ends in spring 2027.
The other pieces are, first of all, the three new buildings that will be built on the site of the old Mercat del Peix, where the earthworks began months ago. Here will be the facilities of the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST), the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (CSIC-Universitat Pompeu Fabra) and some new offices of the UPF itself.
Also newly created will be the CSIC Biosciences Center, which will be built on the site where the State Mobile Park building is located, which will concentrate the different biomedical research units that the CSIC has in Catalonia (300 researchers and 40 research groups). investigation). The Institut d'Investigacions Biomèdiques de Barcelona and the Institut de Biologia Molecular de Barcelona will be located there.
All of these pieces could be ready by the end of this term, in three and a half years. Together they represent around 80% of the Ciutadella del Coneixement project. But another important element would be missing that is not advancing at the same pace. This is the Central Urban Library that the State has to build next to the França station. Mayor Collboni has set a date for its entry into service, no earlier than 2029.
There is another piece to consider, the Barcelona Zoo, which in the coming years must develop its strategic project, which redirects this facility that occupies half of the Ciutadella park towards innovation, research and the protection of animal species, as well as your well-being. From an urban planning point of view, solutions will have to be designed so that the Zoo site stops being a barrier and becomes a permeable space more linked to the entire park and the facilities located outside it.
Despite promoting its scientific vocation – on the very distant horizon, a possible move by the Parliament of Catalonia, which would leave the building it now occupies free – the Ciutadella will continue to be a more conventional park for citizen enjoyment. For this reason, it is planned to continue carrying out actions to improve drainage, vegetation, irrigation (the Ciutadella is irrigated with groundwater) and access to the site.
