The Barcelona Institute of Architecture (BIArch) is an international institution set up to further interaction between academic research, specialized practice and the cultural dissemination of contemporary architecture. Occupying a space midway between schools of architecture and professional praxis, BIArch is an open laboratory for professionals and researchers that aims to promote new ways of thinking and acting faced with technological, energetic and economic conditions in permanent change.

The Barcelona Institute of Architecture is backed by a public-private foundation made up of financial, professional, academic and political institutions with the objective of continuing and extending the action-based discourse that has characterized architecture and urban planning practice in contemporary Barcelona. The Barcelona Institute of Architecture sets out to become a meeting point that is a reference for central architectural discussions and practices in the globalized world.