The YouRban Festival concluded after a 10-day programme that transformed the outdoor space next to Disseny Hub Barcelona into a live lab for circular design and material innovation.
From 23 April to 3 May, the YouRban Mobile Lab operated as a mobile recycling facility, demonstrating how glass fiber-reinforced polymers (GFRP) that are widely used and often discarded can be reprocessed into new objects through design and collaboration.
The festival brought together citizens, designers, architects, artists, researchers, and industry professionals. Workshops, school demonstrations, expert sessions, and thematic talks enabled direct engagement with material demanufacturing and reprocessing, providing practical insight into circular production.
From Waste to Prototype
Participants followed the full lifecycle of recycled materials from waste to prototype. Designers, students, and professionals developed skills by testing GFRP materials and applying circular design methods. Experts from Politecnico di Milano, Fab Lab Barcelona, and Materfad led training on regenerative design and material innovation. Talks and the exhibition at Disseny Hub Barcelona (Cube space) presented results from the Milan and Barcelona pilots, featuring objects and urban solutions created with reprocessed materials, demonstrating the reuse of composite waste as functional, scalable resources.
Building Circular Cities
The Festival is part of YouRban, a Horizon Europe initiative that develops urban systems to reprocess and reuse materials—turning locally sourced reinforced polymer waste into high-value products, reducing transport, emissions, and reliance on raw materials while supporting local economies.
Aligned with the New European Bauhaus, YouRban integrates sustainability, aesthetics, and social inclusion through the design process. The Barcelona pilot demonstrated how design and artistic experimentation can generate practical urban solutions using reprocessed materials.
Scaling Circular Design Beyond the Festival
The festival confirms the viability of a mobile, collaborative production model that engages communities in circular practices. It positions circularity as both a production method and a design approach and supports scaling circular design ecosystems across European cities.