Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) has opened it’s new corporate headquarters, the BSC-REPSOL Building, located in Plaza Eusebi Güell 1-3 in Barcelona. The Regional Minister for Research and Universities, Gemma Geis; the Secretary General for Research of the Ministry of Science and Innovation, Raquel Yotti; the rector of the UPC, Daniel Crespo; the president of the Repsol Foundation, Antonio Brufau, and the director of the BSC, Mateo Valero, have participated today in a brief ceremony to commence what is already one of the largest scientific and technological facilities in the city of Barcelona.
The new headquarters of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center is a 12,000 m2 building, which has four office floors, 530 workstations, 35 meeting rooms, two training rooms, an auditorium and various meeting points to promote the exchange of knowledge among researchers. Two thirds of the BSC staff will be located in this headquarters, and the rest, up to 765 workers, are installed in nearby buildings that, such as the BSC-REPSOL Building, share a location in the Torre Girona gardens.
The BSC-REPSOL Building has had a cost of 19.6 million euros and has been financed thanks to the contributions of the patrons of the center (Ministry of Science and Innovation, Department of Research and Universities of the Generalitat de Catalunya and Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya), the collaboration of the Repsol Foundation and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).
The new BSC building is connected, through a walkway, to what has so far been the center's most emblematic building, the Torre Girona chapel, which currently houses the MareNostrum 4 supercomputer. A new data centre is being built in its basement that will allow additional room to expand supercomputing infrastructures, such as for the future MareNostrum 5. When this happens, the Torre Girona chapel will remain an iconic and open space, housing supercomputing infrastructures.
The director of the BSC, Mateo Valero, has stressed that ‘this new building symbolises, in some way, the growth that the BSC has experienced in its little more than 15 years of existence’ and has affirmed that ‘one of its fundamental contributions is that it will allow a greater interaction between the more than 600 researchers of the centre, who until recently were spread over different buildings and will now have meeting points to exchange ideas, experiences and create new synergies, with all that this has positive for the creation of knowledge.’
