A ballet of construction machinery. The highlight of the inauguration of the World Congress of Architects 2026 Barcelona at the Tres Xemeneies del Besòs was a choreography with six cranes, by the company Cabosanroque and the studio Cube.bz. For half an hour, the six crane operators joined forces to uncork a bottle of cava with one of the cranes and serve a glass to the president of the International Union of Architects (UIA), Regina Gonthier, who with the corresponding toast closed the inauguration of the congress, which is held until Thursday, July 2nd.

The conversion of the Three Chimneys of Sant Adrià de Besòs into an audiovisual hub will also entail a profound transformation of the surrounding area. This transformation is gradually taking shape, and on Thursday, the various institutions involved in the project provided more details. Among other things, they revealed that the redevelopment of the area will also involve reactivating a project that had been dormant for almost nine years: the extension of the tram line to the Port of Badalona. With the aim of providing better accessibility to the future Catalunya Media City, the project revives the plan to extend the Trambesòs beyond the Sant Adrià de Besòs station with two new stops: one opposite the Three Chimneys and another, which will be the terminus, opposite the Port of Badalona. The tram, which will run parallel to the existing railway line, will thus be extended by 1.4 kilometers and could directly connect the Badalona coastline with the center of Barcelona.

The transformation project for the Three Chimneys of Sant Adrià de Besòs continues to take shape. Following the initial major presentation last March of what the interior of the iconic turbine hall of the former thermal power plant should look like – the future Catalonia Media City Now, its surroundings are also beginning to take shape. The Catalan government (Generalitat) announced this Saturday the winning proposal in the competition to design the future Three Chimneys Coastal Park, a green space of nearly 90,000 square meters in the Besòs Delta. One of its key features is its flood-proof design.