Under the motto #EmbraceEquity, the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) celebrates today women’s achievements and takes action to drive gender parity by launching the Women in Tech Fund campaign.

The official theme of this year’s International Women’s Day is #EmbraceEquity and aims for a gender equal world, a world free of bias, stereotypes, and discrimination. A world that’s diverse, equitable, and inclusive.

IAAC has always been an Institution committed to equity and progress; this year the Institute decided to celebrate the International Women’s Day with all its powerful and talented women, who at the present time make up half of its total number of employees.

The gathering took place in the Nest City Lab by Apocapoc, an urban ecosystem that favours sustainability and experiments with everything that can lead towards a more meaningful life. IAAC shares most of the values that are at the hearth of this project, founded back in 2017.

Apocapoc, created by Valerie Aubert, Fabien Franceschini and Sebastien Détroyat, gave birth to the Nest City Lab space with the mission to imagine and create spaces of life that encourage, on a daily basis, experimentation and the development of sustainable habits with generative impacts as a laboratory of ideas.

Located within a boiler factory in the Poblenou, the Nest City Lab is a real commitment to the regeneration of the biodiversity of the cities, to show the abundance of resources, to recover the living soil and to restore an urban environment that is connected, balanced and healthy.

The preservation of the industrial heritage and sustainability were the main ideas of this collaborative project which has the intention of creating a conscious space in line with permaculture, a system of principles of agricultural, economic and social design, based on the patterns and characteristics of the natural ecosystem.

The architectural strategy builds on preserving the original structure and improving the building envelope as well as on closing the natural cycles in a circular manner, through a passive and bioclimatic design. Flexible and removable modules are built in the interior.

This gathering was the chance for the women of the Institute to envision the future steps of the Women in Tech Fund, an initiative that aims to close the gender gap, helping those who identify with the female gender to embrace technology and promote women’s empowerment around the world.