On 4 and 5 October, the Hotel Novotel Madrid Center will be the venue for BBMeetings, the first forum for professionals of design and interior architecture and investors in the hotel and retail sector, organized by Barcelona Building Construmat, Fira de Barcelona’s construction fair. With this forum, which will be held at the same time as the Piscina & Wellness show, also organized by Fira de Barcelona, BBConstrumat continues with its programme of activities for 2018 designed as a prelude to the fair, which will take place in May next year.
At BBMeetings, professionals from the hotel and interior design sectors will discuss the trends shaping the present and future, identifying innovation, creativity and digitization as the main driving forces in a seminar which, with the cooperation of the CODIC (Higher Council of Spanish Designers) and Fira de Barcelona’s Piscina & Wellness Fair, will connect professionals and companies from the contract and retail sectors and promote business opportunities.
In this regard, Teresa Casas, the President of the CODIC, believes that “the forum will provide an opportunity to meet the best professionals in the interior design, architecture and business sectors”. Casas also points out that “the CODIC and the General Council of Spanish Interior Design Associations are participating in this forum because we believe in the importance of the contract at the current time in areas such as innovation, sustainability, lighting, technology, computing and the economy in general”.
As for architect and town planner Carlota Casanova, one of the curators of the BBMeetings forum, she states that, at the moment, “the complexity of the projection and construction processes is increasing with the passage of time, due to the greater specialization of the sector, globalization, the growth of sensitivities towards integration, the environment and technology. Consequently, the number of agents involved in these processes is also increasing”.
In Casanova’s opinion, “real success requires the proper gearing of the parts throughout the project chain and good teamwork, with people from different fields. Materials, trends, colour, regulations, sensitivities, construction systems, contract, installations, lighting, accessibility, energy efficiency, innovation, technology and heritage are some of the tools that must be known and mastered nowadays to guarantee a unitary and unique result for the project”.
Raúl Blanco, General Secretary of Industry and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises of the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism, will open the forum, which consists of two cycles, titled When Business meets Design and Tools or Roots?. The first, which will take place on 4 October, will present success stories in hotel reform projects as a result of close cooperation with renowned architects and designers.
It will look at the cases of the ME Reina Victoria, the emblematic hotel in Plaza Santa Ana in Madrid, the unconventional Aire de Bárdenas in Tudela in Navarre and the Paradores of Vielha in Lleida and Santo Evento de Noguera de Ramuín in Ourense, with the participation of the teams responsible for their transformation.
In the afternoon there will be a debate on the different contracting models, attended by, among others the Director of Casa Viva, Contract Project, Marcel Benedito, specialized journalist Marcelo Leslabay, Carmen Llopis, Director of On Diseño and Celia Valenciano, Director of Punta Fina News.
The second, set to take place on 5 October, will analyse innovation, technology, sustainability and materiality in the hotel sector with two panel discussions. Following the presentation by aeronautical engineer Miguel Bello, Managing Director of the Deimos Group and member of the astrodynamics committee of the International Astronautical Federation (IAF), two debates will take place.
The first, titled Tech Talks, will discuss technological and digital innovation in the hotel sector, with the participation, among others, of Guillermo Gaspart, founder of BYHOURS, the first and only hourly hotel booking website, Valerie Bergeron, Director of MaterFAD, and Emma Cerdà, global director of luxury brands at Meliá Hotels International. The second, under the name Green Talks, will insist on the need to commit to sustainability and recycling, with the presence of José María Martínez from Friendly Materials-PMMT and Alberto del Hoyo from Igniagreen. A debate and the presentation of the conclusions of the Contract Forum after the two days of sessions will bring an end to the first BBMeetings.
Together with BBMeetings, this year has seen the BBFuture conference cycle co-organized with the International University of Catalonia (UIC Barcelona School of Architecture) on innovation, architecture and design, held in the initial months of this year, and BBTalks, a seminar in which representatives of different cities, architects, sectoral startups and analysts from around the world reflected on the impact of innovation on today’s cities.