IAAC to Lead the Barcelona Urban Tech Hub

The announcement, made by the Barcelona City Council, follows a public competition to reimagine a series of disused industrial sites across the city, as part of a broader strategy to foster innovation, research, and talent-driven development. IAAC’s proposal was selected alongside those of the Mondragón Corporation and Palo Alto BCN XRLAB for other locations in Sant Andreu and Poblenou.

At its core, BUTH is more than a building. It is a strategic platform for training, open innovation, and experimentation—anchored in architecture, but unfolding across technology, entrepreneurship and ecological thinking. The hub will include advanced education programmes, public lectures, startup incubation, and cross-sector collaboration. It will become an anchor point in a new phase of Barcelona’s urban intelligence.

“IAAC was founded in 2001 to reimagine how digital technologies could enable architecture and urbanism to be reinvented,” said IAAC Director Daniel Ibáñez. “Twenty years later, this initiative consolidates IAAC’s role as a public-facing institution of reference, able to connect research and talent with the major social and climate challenges of our time.”

The project is being developed in collaboration with key players in the city’s innovation landscape, including the Architects’ Association of Catalonia (COAC), Tech Barcelona, and Barcelona Global. It forms part of the wider Barcelona Green Deal, the city’s 2030 urban and economic agenda focused on competitiveness, sustainability, and equity.

“After sustained growth in the 22@ District, with the Barcelona Urban Tech Hub project, IAAC faces a leap in scale to promote the economy of urban innovation, in partnership with key entities of the city,” added Ana Vallés, President of IAAC’s Board of Trustees.

BUTH will also draw on the network built by IAAC through the Fab Lab Barcelona and its long-standing engagement with maker culture and digital fabrication. The programme will include scholarships for local creatives, prototyping labs, and new spaces for collaboration between architects, technologists, policymakers, and researchers.

For Vicente Guallart, Founder of IAAC, the project also signals a shift in the role of architects: “This is a great opportunity to expand the role of the architect—going from designers to entrepreneurs and social transformers of the city. The global network of IAAC’s partners is at the service of Barcelona.”

With over 1,500 alumni in 70+ countries and partnerships with institutions such as MIT, Harvard, the European Forest Institute and Bauhaus Earth, IAAC will leverage its international reach to turn this new site into a hub for experimentation and knowledge transfer.

BUTH is not just about technology—it’s about the ecology of systems that allow cities to evolve. As Barcelona looks to the future, IAAC will help ensure that innovation is not simply adopted, but constructed.

BUTH is an initiative of:
IAAC – Advanced Architecture Barcelona

With the collaboration of:
COAC, Tech Barcelona, Barcelona Global

With the support of local institutions:
Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Mobile World Capital, Itec, Esade, Bist, i2cat, Carnet, Fundació Catalunya la Pedrera, Fira de Barcelona, Rebuild, Col·legi Enginyers Informàtics, Associació d’Enginyeria Tècnica de la Comunicació, Graus.TIC, CCI-C Clúster de la Construcció Industrialitzada de Catalunya, Barq Festival, Building Digital Twin

With the support of local companies:
Agbar, Acciona, Sorigué, Urbidermis, Anteverti, Italtel, Finsa, Visoren, Abacus, Ideal, McRit, Savills, Bestiario, Lead to Change, TBSV – The Building Squad Ventures, Xilonor

With the support of international institutions:
EIT Mobility, European Forest Institute, MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms, Fab Foundation, Universidad de Desarrollo (Chile), Bauhaus Earth, Harvard GSD, SCI-Arc, University of Chicago – Urban Theory Lab, College of Architecture and Landscape of Peking University, Harbour.Space University, UPDIS Urban Planning & Design Institute Shenzhen, Melbourne School of Design, Habidatum, Turenscape, MIT.