The DHub, one of the institutions with the greatest potential in Barcelona, celebrates its tenth anniversary in 2024, coinciding with a moment of great transformation, with the works on Plaza de Glòries already completed, the opening of new spaces (a shop-bookstore and a annex building, the Cub, which will be a laboratory for work, research and content development), with a new metro entrance that will give direct access to the equipment, and, above all, with a renewed and ambitious programming, the first after the arrival of José Luis de Vicente to the direction of the Design Museum, which aspires to rescue from its lethargy and launch into the future the largest cultural project that emerged in post-Olympic Barcelona. From now on, in addition, the center, which is also home to the district Library and two private entities linked to design, the FAD and the BCD, will become "the home of the creative industries", as announced by the councilor Xavier Marcé. To do this, the City Council has created its own department, headed by Mireia Escobar, the current director of the DHub.
In this way, the DHub will have a double program of exhibitions and activities. On the one hand, that generated by the equipment itself and, on the other, that which will be fed from the proposals made by the private sector, whether from the world of design, fashion, urban planning, video games, digital productions. immersive, architecture or even signature restoration. Among the latter, in addition to festivals such as OFFF, Barcelona Design Week or Llum Barcelona, there is, for example, the Pure Gold exhibition, about the 40 years of TV3 and Catalunya Ràdio, whose natural setting would at first glance be the Palau Robert, or the one dedicated to the Central del Circ. The overall budget of the DHub currently amounts to eight million euros.
As for its own programming, which is what will provide the center with an identity and a differential discourse compared to the rest of the city's institutions, the first exhibition, Patterns and recognitions. A three-part composition by United Visual Artists, arrives this Friday as part of Llum Barcelona and consists of three large-format installations created by the renowned London studio that transform the orbital mechanics of the planets into kinetic sculptures and light art pieces. to the statistical models that govern decision making. The exhibition, curated by José Luis de Vicente and Maria Güell, director of LlumBCN, will be on display until March 17.
It will be followed, in April, by the Citizen Office of Synthetic Memories, from the team of designers and researchers Domestic Data Streamers, which through artificial intelligence will shape the memories of those citizens who wish to do so into images. The proposal will generate the exhibition in real time and it is expected that 1,000 people will attend.
The designer Martí Guixé, one of the most internationally renowned, will rebuild (from May to September) the bar he designed in a place on Entença Street with the only help of a 3D printer (from the glasses and plates to the coating of the walls) but had to close before its inauguration due to the pandemic. Also in May, an exhibition will open that will collect the selected and winning products of the ADI awards and, already in October, the FAD will recover the combative spirit that distinguished them with an exhibition, Against design, which reflects on the effects of the daily practices of creators.
The DHub will close the year with three more stellar exhibitions. The ocean speaks. New ecologies and technologies of the sea, which analyzes the effects of human action on marine ecosystems and reflects on how the city should redesign its relationship with the sea. Its curator will be De Vicente and will address the topic from an interdisciplinary perspective that ranges from fashion to architecture, speculative design or urban planning. The exhibition will coincide with Vinçon vs Ikea, "the most unique of the year", according to the director. The genesis dates back to the moment when, once the emblematic Passeig de Gràcia store closed, its founder, Fernando Amat, transferred his archive to the museum's collections. They offered him an exhibition, but he responded with a provocative gesture: selecting and exhibiting the 100 Ikea objects that he would have liked to sell at Vinçon. Its curator is architect and design historian Juli Capella.
Finally, and coinciding with the tenth anniversary of the opening of the DHub, in December the presentation of the Museu del Disseny's collections will be reformulated with Matter Matters, a proposal by the curator and architect Olga Subirós that breaks the traditional chronological and disciplinary coordinates to build a reflection on the current state of the world and our relationship with matter and materials, in which more than 300 pieces, from the 12th to the 21st century, will be put into dialogue.
