The UIC Barcelona School of Architecture and Flexbrick have just signed a collaboration agreement to jointly undertake a R&D+i project aimed at the architectural incorporation of photovoltaic sensors into the company's ceramic fabrics. Cooperation between the two began in 2008 when Flexbrick undertook another research project with UIC Barcelona which has led the resulting fabrics to currently be exported all over the world with great success.
Senior lecturer Pedro Casariego and full professor Vicenç Sarrablo will be principal investigators for the project, which will have a duration of two years. It is a competitive project that received a grant from the Centre for Industrial Technological Development (CDTI) in the Ministry of Science and Innovation.
“It is a source of great pride that Flexbrick, after all these years, has once again placed its trust in us to take a new step towards its proposals for innovation,” said Vicenç Sarrablo, the inventor of Flexbrick fabric.
Lluis Pinardel, the director of Flexbrick, said: “At Flexbrick we firmly believe in collaboration between businesses and universities as we understand it to be a very powerful path for development and growth in a company. The actions carried out in the past with UIC Barcelona have proven this to us.”
Flexbrick ceramic fabric is an innovative industrial construction system created by Vicenç Sarrablo, a full professor at UIC Barcelona and director of the Barcelona Ceramics Chair. Flexbrick is based on braided steel wires that contains a grid of pieces of baked clay and other materials, laid out in a table, a system that allows flexible sheets to be generated for the construction of coverings (pavements, facades, cladding) and thin-shell structures (vaults, catenary pergolas).
Flexbrick has won numerous awards, among which the awards that stand out include an award in the product category from the XIII Spanish Biennial of Architecture and Urban Planning (2016), a plaque of honour from the Spanish Association of Scientists in the category of innovative companies (2014), the first INNO Green Forum Award in the category of Best Non-Vegetable Product (2013) and the first Catalan Construction Award in the category of Innovation in Construction (2013).
