El Design Cluster de Barcelona center de Disseny has won the project AIRTOPIA and will participate in ALGAVOLTAIC, two research projects that are part of the call for Support for Innovative Business Groups.
El Design Cluster has been able to access the call for Support for Innovative Business Groups thanks to having been recognized as Innovative Business Group. Both projects will have the support and financing of the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, as well as the European Union by Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, within the AEIs Support program to help improve the competitiveness of Spanish industry.
These projects are a sample of the work of the Barcelona center de Disseny to bring research and innovation closer to companies and position it as a key agent for access to resources by the design sector.
AIRTOPIA, a project led by the Cluster design of the B C D and with the participation of Domestic Data Streamers, Elisava, Anima Design, Hospital Sant Joan de Déu, all members of the Disseny Cluster, and the Mental Health Cluster Catalonia, will have a total cost of € 380.873, of those who 292.055 € They will be provided by the State with funds from the European Union. The 83% of this grant, total 242.405,65 €, will be distributed among the members of the Cluster project participants.
While the project ALGAVOLTAIC is powered by SOLARTYS, the Spanish Association for the internationalization and innovation of solar companies, with the participation of Barcelona Design Center, Noumena Design Research Education, Ketter Batteries and the IAAC, the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia. The total cost of the project is 215.409 €, of which the State and the European Union will contribute 168.411 €. Barcelona center de Disseny It will carry out tasks of dissemination and visibility of the results, as well as networking and search for partners to increase the Technological Maturity Level (TRL).
Regarding the themes of each project, on the one hand, AIRTOPIA born from the Concern about addressing the paradigm shift caused by digitization in the industry, placing the user/client at the center of its activity, empowering them thanks to access to information and technology, and in this case, in relation to the health data that a specific environment fosters.
In this context, the project seeks to investigate, innovate, design and digitize a service that promotes optimal health conditions, physical comfort, mental well-being and energy efficiency in buildings.
The final objective is, therefore, to prototype a system based on the Internet of Things (IoT) supported by data management through Big Data, capable of measure, analyze, control and improve the risk factors for people's health, both mental and physical, inside buildings, while guaranteeing your comfort and optimizing the necessary energy resources.
The project will have as the epicenter of the research developed and test bench the Sant Joan de Déu Hospital, a particularly sensitive environment, as it provides services and treatments to children whose exposure to pollutants can be decisive for their physical recovery and their state of mind.
Moreover, ALGAVOLTAIC seeks to develop a seaweed panel for facades, so that it integrates nature into cities, producing energy and food, such as spirulina, considered a superfood, and providing climate benefits to buildings thanks to its shading system.
The panel will be equipped with an interface in which the user can monitor the health of the algae and the production of energy and with a battery that can store the energy generated.
In addition, so that the panel is as customizable as possible and adapts to the needs of each consumer and environment, its design will be parametric and their parts produced through digital manufacturing, which includes the Print 3D.
The intrinsic objectives of the project are, apart from produce green energy, decarbonize urban areas thanks to a façade system that can optimize the ability of algae to transform CO2 into oxygen, boost research new sources of energy production and promote the supernutrient production in urban areas.
50 years of BCD
In 2023, Barcelona Design Center celebrates the 50th anniversary of its creation in 1973. At a time when our country was beginning to open up to the world, a sector of Barcelona society saw the need to give design the importance it had in other European cities, as is the case in London with the Design Council, founded in 1944. A group of designers, with the support of a group of businessmen, founded the Industrial Design Center of Barcelona, which would later be Barcelona Design Center Foundation, promotion center to value the design, both in the industrial and business field and in society, as well as promoting the meeting between design professionals and companies, and facing the new challenge of international competitiveness and foreign trade.
These 50 years have been very prolific, with thousands of activities, projects, awards, exhibitions, conferences, workshops or festivals; We have collaborated with many local and international entities and we have taken the design of Barcelona to more than 30 countries.
