BAU – Arts and Design College of Barcelona

Founded in Barcelona in 1989 in the Gràcia district, and inspired by the Bauhaus, BAU set out to train designers able to read social and economic change and to treat design as a strategic asset. More than thirty-five years on it is a university centre for design and fine arts that places students in an active role as agents of change.

Affiliation with the University of Vic began in 1990; in 2009 the centre pioneered the Bachelor’s Degree in Design and moved to Poblenou, the 22@ innovation district. A master’s in research and experimentation in design followed in 2017, a doctorate in 2019, and in 2021 BAU became the first private centre in Catalonia to offer the official Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts. It is now affiliated with the Universitat Rovira i Virgili.

Its campus covers more than 10,000 square metres in three renovated industrial buildings, Pujades, Llacuna and Granada, with a fourth under construction, and seventeen workshops and laboratories at the centre of learning, from graphic production and digital fabrication to fashion, audiovisual media and ceramics. Studies span bachelor’s degrees in Design and in Fine Arts, a university master’s, its own postgraduate degrees and a doctoral programme, alongside online courses with RMIT University. Research runs through the GREDITS group, recognised by AGAUR as emerging in 2014 and consolidated in 2017 and 2021.