Barcelona's booth
at Smart City Expo
World Congress
Conceptualizing the city's presence at a world's leading event
©Fira de Barcelona
The challenge
In an increasingly competitive world where cities must position themselves to attract investments, talent, and new opportunities, being present in the main global urban forums is imperative.
As the host city of the largest event on cities and innovation on the planet—the Smart City Expo World Congress—Barcelona faces the annual need to conceptualize, design, and produce a booth that allows it to showcase its vision to the world, highlight key projects in relevant areas of the congress, and create a conducive networking space for establishing fruitful contacts with other cities, companies, and organizations in the sector.
Given our role as curators of the Smart City Expo World Congress and our deep knowledge of the global ecosystem represented in the congress, since the 2021 edition, the Barcelona City Council has entrusted Anteverti with the comprehensive conceptualization of its booth for the event, from the initial idea of the space and its narrative to the final production.
Since 2021, we have been assisting the Barcelona City Council in conceptualizing its booth at the world's leading congress on urban innovation—the Smart City Expo World Congress—by developing its naming and narrative and coordinating its design and production.
©Ajuntament de Barcelona
©Ajuntament de Barcelona
Our approach
In collaboration with the involved teams from the city council, Anteverti takes charge of executing the creative and functional stage of the process: identifying key themes to be positioned through the booth each year, generating a slogan, a narrative, and a discourse that encompasses, positions, and highlights them, and defining the spaces and needs that the booth must satisfy.
In a second stage, together with the event organizer and producer Fira de Barcelona, we bring the booth concept to reality, coordinating the design of its spaces, graphics, and elements, and ensuring supervision of their production. We act as a liaison between the City Council and the production team throughout the process.
With 330m2, the booths we conceptualized for Barcelona showcase the city's global stance, emphasizing urban innovation for a resilient, green, and livable city, fostering well-being, and enhancing economic competitiveness. They serve as interactive exhibition spaces, an agora for public sessions, a hosting area for startups, and a private meeting room for key stakeholders.
©Fira de Barcelona
The impact
In the past three years, our support has allowed the Barcelona City Council to have a prominent presence at the most important event on the calendar for promoting innovative urban solutions, welcoming more than 25K visitors from 140 countries.
In a 330m2 space located at the heart of the exhibition area of the Smart City Expo World Congress, the successive booths conceptualized by Anteverti have showcased the city’s global positioning regarding the urban model it champions. This model is based on using urban innovation and digitization to simultaneously drive a more resilient, green, and livable city, greater well-being for its residents, and increased economic and productive competitiveness.
The booths have provided the city with an interactive exhibition space for municipal projects, an agora for sessions and conferences in front of the public, a space to host up to 15 startups and SMEs innovating from the city, and a private meeting room for encounters with key stakeholders in municipal action.
