Architect: ZGF Architects
The Mercat del Peix Research Center’s transdisciplinary research is anticipated to foster new fields of knowledge and approaches to planetary well-being, and a jury has chosen ZGF Architects and its Barcelona-based collaborators MIRAG/Double Twist as the architectural competition winner for its new facility, which is intended to bring together international experts in the experimental sciences, social sciences, and humanities to tackle some of the most difficult and complex issues affecting the future of our planet, such as biodiversity loss and the economics and governance of climate change.
“Together with our partners at MIRAG/Double Twist, ZGF brings our expertise in sustainable laboratory design to create a net-positive home for the world’s most impactful planetary-health research,” said Ted Hyman, Managing Partner of ZGF. “As a competition team, our expertise combines an understanding of the culturally important site and the complexities of building sustainable laboratories. It will result in a project reflective of the world-changing initiatives that will happen inside.”
The combination of MIRAG/Double Twist’s culturally significant building designs in Catalonia—including the ongoing construction of Antoni Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia—with ZGF’s strength as a designer of net-zero and net-positive office, laboratory, research, and energy facilities ensured a fully sustainable and culturally relevant winning design for a site of great significance to Barcelona. The location is close to the Mediterranean Sea and next to the city’s main public park and green space, the verdant Parc de la Ciutadella, which has a painful connection to Catalonia’s attempts at independence. The research center will specifically be located at the site of Barcelona’s Mercat del Peix, a former historic fish market, within the Ciutadella of Knowledge, a modern European hub of scientific and cultural innovation.
