The Basque Culinary Center (BCC) is looking for prestigious architects to be in charge of raising the building of what will be one of its star projects for the future: the Gastronomy Open Ecosystem, COe. A centre that will constitute a space for innovation and gastronomic entrepreneurship with which it is intended to position the Basque Country as one of the world's leading ecosystems in the field of innovation in this field.

The center for entrepreneurship and culinary innovation will be located in a new headquarters separate from BCC, also in San Sebastian as its parent company, and for which a plot has already been chosen in the Gross neighborhood of around 5,500 m2 on which it is intended to build a building that is also an architectural reference center for the city. 

If the headquarters of the Basque Culinary Center is presented as an innovative pile of dishes devised by the architecture studio Vaumm, which won the competition to build the building of the gastronomic university of the Mondragón Group, the BCC has just closed the call a few days ago for a new project competition to which it aims to get architecture professionals to be presented at an international level. 

Specifically, it is a tender specification of projects with jury intervention "for the drafting of the projects and management of the construction works of the GOe building" with a budget of 1.6 million euros.

The rules of the contest contemplate a first prize or consideration to the winning proposal of 36,000 euros, in addition to four runners-up or consideration to each of the four remaining proposals) of 24,200 euros.

The Gastronomy Open Ecosystem will be one of the star projects of the new stage of the Basque Culinary Center, as announced by Joxe Mari Aizega, its general director, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the gastronomic university.

Government Aid

Just yesterday the Basque Government approved in the Governing Council an allocation of 500,000 euros for the implementation of the GOe.

The new space based on innovation and entrepreneurship will seek with an international perspective, the attraction and advanced training of talent through combining face-to-face activity and digital activity through a virtual community that will act as a beacon of traction, meeting, co-creation and training of students, entrepreneurs, researchers and companies.

The initiative is part of the public-private project 'The Food Global Ecosystem', which will serve to attract companies, innovation projects, entrepreneurial talent and startups to the Basque Country, as well as to scale up projects in the growing agri-food sector in its technological aspects (agritech, foodtech, and gastronomytech).

This ecosystem has more than 60 companies, and a network of assets and services to support research, innovation and digitalization of the Food Chain of the Basque Country; such as Hazi, the main unifying agent and catalyst of the initiative, Neiker as a research center for projects in the agricultural field, Azti as an agent of large research projects and generation of food technology, and Basque Culinary Center as the main actor in attracting talent, entrepreneurs in the food field and a vehicle for the internationalization of the ecosystem.

It also has the support of the Basque Network of Science, Technology and Innovation of the Basque Country as a boost to strategic and transformative projects.