Jordi, one of the betahaus | BCN founder picked me up in his Mini at the airport and gave me a nice drive through the sunny streets of Barcelona. After half an hour we arrived in Graciá, Vlilafranca 7 1km from the center of Barcelona. A well known neigborhood for the creative dudes and hipstars, the Gaudí-designed Parc Güell is around the corner.

I have the feeling I entered a layback very little village, right in the center of 

Barcelona. Every other street you find your self in the middle of a plaza sitting next to an old Spanish couple or a bunch of tourists from Scandinavia.

Right here is the betahaus | Barcelona located. It s an old industrial building with 5 storeys and 5 rooftop tarraces. One of them is guarded by an old banana palmtree. The perfect place for coworking, chillin and hot summer bbqs overlooking Barcelona and the sea.

The building was empty for more than 15 years and is packed with trashy stuff. Since a few weeks its onder construction to become the place to be for coworker, startups and maker from all over the city. For the last 10 days 17 architecture students from the Elisava University, Barcelona, Masterprogramm in sustainable Architecture and Design have been working hard on a project called „Waste-nity“ waste as an opportunity.

The task for those days has been to create some new furniutures out of the material the students find in the building.

4 teams had 2 days to design the betaspace objects, then another 4 days to work on the prototypes. There are two betabreakfast tables, some chairs out of paper cartonage and a mobile livingroom box.

Marisol, one of the students tells me how the mobile livingroom box will function: „If the box is not in use, it looks like a plain storage box, as soon as you snip your finger it will become a cosy living room, a place to relax, drink and enjoy a break from hard working.“

After this day at the not-finished-yet-but-soon-to-be betahaus| Barcelona I already can imagine how it will be packed with a bunch of coworkers, the next superstar startup enjoying lot s of „sundowners“ on the rooftop tarrace. We have some construction work a head of us but the spirit is already there!

For those of you who are in Barcelona in the moment please come and join Jordi and the rest of the betahaus team for a cold beer on the rooftop tarrace and have a look on the great „Waste-nity“ objects. For the rest of you we ll keep you posted when the official opening will be, you definitely have to book a flight to Barcelona then.

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