This is what the future audiovisual hub of the Tres Chimeneas will look like.

Sant Adrià del Besòs / BarcelonaFirst staging of the socialist government's push for the Catalunya Media City project, the hub which aims to become a European benchmark in the audiovisual, digital and video game sector, located in the Tres Chimeneas building in Sant Adrià de Besòs. President Salvador Illa – accompanied by the Ministers of the Presidency, Territory, Research and Culture, a large group of mayors from the Besòs area and representatives of the audiovisual and university sectors – visited this Saturday an emblematic space that citizens were able to discover thanks to the Manifesta Biennial and will not be able to return until the end of 2028, when the iconic turbine hall of the former thermal power plant is expected to be operational, converted into a 22,600 m² macro-space that will be used for production, research, training, business development, and audiovisual exhibition.

The facilities' dimensions are spectacular. Once renovated, expanded, and equipped, they will house sound stages, auditoriums, recording studios, a library, editing rooms... The largest space reaches 5,600 m.², a height of 17 meters and capacity for 4,000 people, and is expected to be used for immersive projections, e-sports or hybrid formats between art and technology. The planned investment amounts to 70.8 million euros. For Salvador Illa, the project "is an act of affirmation of Catalan identity, projected to the world through the audiovisual industry, and is therefore an act of openness and ambition of a country that knows it has the power, capacity, and desire to play a role in a Europe that must be strengthened." "In that space, you feel called to do great things," he asserted.

If the epicenter of the hub of innovation, 30 kilometers away, in the Terrassa Audiovisual Park, will be the machinery looms: two large sets will be built - 1,000 m² and 2,200 m², the largest in Catalonia—which are to host large-format film and fiction shoots. In this case, the investment will be €13 million, and construction is expected to last from 2026 to 2028.

Presidency will lead it

The push translates into the creation of a joint committee made up of the Generalitat (Generalitat), the Besòs Consortium (Consorcio del Besòs), and the Terrassa City Council. The Catalan Audiovisual Media Corporation (CBM) is also incorporated, as a pillar of Catalan audiovisual media. The committee will be responsible for implementing the project, which will now report to the Minister of the Presidency, Albert Dalmau, and not to Culture as it has done until now, to highlight the centrality and transversality of the initiative. The Department of Education and the Department of Research and Universities should soon join, as it is expected to host between 2,000 and 2,500 students each year.

Last year it was put out to tender the first part of the project An architectural competition was held, in which 26 firms submitted entries. This Saturday, the image of the building's central nave was revealed. The building will be renovated and expanded by the Garcés, De Seta, Bonet, and Marvel studios. Work will begin in the fall of 2026. The design will retain the fundamental heritage features but will develop new functional uses, in addition to opening the space towards the sea, like a balcony overlooking Barcelona and the Maresme.

An Act of Continuity

The Catalonia Media City project was born in 2021 during the government of Pere Aragonès, who was also present at the event this Saturday morning along with the former Minister of Culture, Natàlia Garriga. Isla thanked them for their work and stated that their work will be "one of continuity" – "We haven't had to change a single comma" – and "one of cooperation" between administrations, governments, and territories, as well as between public and private initiatives. Aragonès's initial idea was that audiovisual and digital culture –with which Barcelona has great international prestige– could become a strategic field to position the country and boost creation in Catalan. The Catalan audiovisual sector is a growing one: it represents 3% of GDP (€8.636 billion), brings together 4,161 companies and employs 41,866 people.

The initiative will also serve to redesign the Sant Adrià seafront. The urban plan was approved in 2023, and foresees the transformation of 32 hectares that, in addition to the hub, will include an urban park, housing (40% of which is protected), and other economic activities. Development work is expected to begin in the first half of 2027.

The architectural project of Garcés, De Seta, Bonet and Marvel

"With Catalunya Media City, there seems to be a new revolution in cultural centers."

The renovation of the Tres Chimeneas turbine hall is a project of sufficient magnitude to require the involvement of more than one architectural firm. The competition winners, Garcés, De Seta, Bonet Arquitectes (GdSB) and the American firm Marvel (also based in Barcelona), share the experience of working with "the pre-existence," as architect Daria de Seta says. "It's about intervening with a contemporary sensibility but very attentive to the site, to history, and respectful of the traces of memory. This collaboration has been as if we were a single firm," she explains.

Despite the new uses and the expansion, they sought to ensure that the building maintains a certain air of ruin, somewhere between archaeology and science fiction. "The turbine hall is not only a singular building," adds De Seta, "but also enigmatic: a prism planted with three chimneys in an almost deserted location on the seashore, at the edge of all these municipalities."

From its staircase, the former Sant Adrià de Besòs thermal power plant is visible "from land, sea, and air," as Jordi Garcés says. However, when you enter, you find "an interior world that is like a landscape," describes De Seta, known along with her partners for projects such as the Palace of Justice in Strasbourg. "The lower part is like a jungle of pillars, with very perforated floors. It's like a world of light and shadow, above which is that almost metaphysical space that is the turbine hall, 150 meters long by 17 meters high," she says. The building is divided into three parts, one for each of the turbines and chimneys.

The existing building could be used for architectural and sustainability reasons, but it was necessary to expand the building because it couldn't accommodate spaces like the film sets. They proposed two new buildings surrounding the existing building: a module along the lines of the existing ones, which will be a resource center, and another, elongated, lower building for six film sets, two for each of the three parts between the building and the beach. This last building, when integrated into its surroundings thanks to the planned vegetation, will resemble a dune landscape.

From producing energy to producing knowledge

With the expansion, the Sant Adrià de Besòs complex will increase from 22,600 m² about 35,000 m²The budget for the works is around 43 million euros, and they are scheduled for completion in 2028. "I like to say that this project doesn't have a style," says architect Esteban de Backer of the Marvel studio. "Style is a matter that can be very artificial, and here it's really about understanding the context and having great respect for what already exists," he says. That's why the resource center, where there will be services like the management, restaurant, library, auditorium, another for immersive experiences and access to the large turbine hall, will blend in with what already exists, although it will be made with lighter and more sustainable materials.

It will have a distinctive feature: it will be wrapped in a curtain of LED lights that will illuminate the square in front. With this fourth module, which according to De Seta is "the mastermind of the entire project," the chimneys will be located symmetrically in the middle of the complex, whereas previously they were anchored to one side. "We had planned for the extension to be more expressive, but in the end we realized that what it had more was that you look at the complex and you don't realize that it has been expanded," says Guido Hartray, also from Marvel, who recalls previous works by his studio such as St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, a theater and community center built in a former tobacco warehouse. "New things add to what already exists, they don't overshadow it," adds Anna Bonet.

A large, revolutionary room

"When the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris was built, it went from being a museum to a cultural centre, a place where people went to try all kinds of experiences. Now other changes are taking place: in the hub Catalunya Media City will be a place of laboratory and enjoyment, explains De Seta. There seems to be a new revolution in the world of cultural centers. It's not just about returning this entire place to Sant Adrià, but about creating a new institution where residents and the public coexist.

Regarding sustainability, the roof of the large turbine hall will be covered with photovoltaic panels and will take advantage of the thermal inertia of the concrete. This great viewpoint. "Catalunya Media City acts as a bridge between two coastlines, between two territories, on a regional scale that was not normally communicated: Barcelona is always talked about between the Llobregat and Besòs, but here we suddenly focus on the Maresme as well," concludes De Seta.