This amazing photo was sent to us by Arthur Goldberg, Associate Professor of Genetics and Data Science at the Institute for Data Science and Genomic Technology, Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Goldberg came to the PRBB as an instructor at the “Whole cell modelling summer school” that was organized by the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in April 2019.
The picture shows the privileged surroundings of the Biomedical Research Park of Barcelona (PRBB) building. Probably one of the few (if not the only) first-class research infrastructures to be located on the seafront, the PRBB was inaugurated in May 2006. More than a decade later, the park keeps going strong, with excellent research in biomedicine being carried out by its centres, from the molecular to the populational level.
But getting here wasn’t easy… as Manuel Brullet and Albert de Pineda, the two architects behind the PRBB, explain: “Work to construct the building began in September 2001. The main feature of the excavation was the significant presence of the water table, approximately 5 m below the original ground level, due to the proximity of the sea.”
Indeed, in order to ensure that the water table did not pose any problems for the building, well point draining pipes were incorporated 2 m before the water table was intercepted, to draw water up out of the ground. All in all, the drainage process took about a year!
