Disseny Hub

Designed by the fashionable MBM firm (Oriel Bohigas), this is the place to come to terms with Barcelona's near-fatal obsession with design. The 'Hub' is an ambitious institution that combines museums with a research and exhibition centre that will explore the meaning of modern design while it helps create new products for Catalan industry.

Recent exhibitions have dealt with digital fabrication (3D printing), ecological technology and architecture, product design since the Industrial Revolution and Catalan couture.

The museum is an unusual cantilevered building covered in copper plate. It is meant as the centrepiece for the colossally ambitious redevelopment of the Plaça de les Glòries Catalanes, and Bohigas has given it a properly striking design.

Barcelonans are already calling the original version the grapadora (stapler), although to us it could be part camper van, part fox terrier. It definitely has a face, but it's a friendly face, and the building looks to be a good neighbour for the new centre.