Arauna Studio humanizes Barcelona's asphalted areas

The new graphic image accompanying actions of tactical urbanism provides the city with an easily recognizable code, helping assimilate any new uses of the urban space, as well as humanizing asphalted areas.

This project has been recently honoured with the Grand Laus Award 2023 from ADG-FAD and it has been also recognized at the Art Directors Club Awards in New York.

Tactical urbanism, an environmental and social response

Many areas in Barcelona present air pollution and acoustic pollution levels above WHO's standards, due to the traffic of fossil-fuel powered vehicles mainly. Frantic urban life also makes it hard for citizens to socially gather, circulate peacefully, enjoy spaces and protect care within the urban areas.

In the present context of climate emergency, Barcelona City Council is adapting to the new mobility needs and redefining the way of inhabiting the city. Tactical urbanism shifts street functions very rapidly, inexpensively and adaptively, in order to gain more space to walk, play, relax, and care for ourselves and for each other. That is, in order to recover urban space for citizens.

Humanizing the pavement through graphic intervention

The graphic system developed to identify tactical urbanism actions in Barcelona has been designed for fast and low-cost application, by using paint.

The graphic code acts as a signage element on pavement surfaces that have been recovered for pedestrians, bicycles, schools and leisure. It has been thought and designed to humanize asphalt –to bring warmth to areas covered by an intrinsically hostile material, and to reformulate the diversity of situations, needs and contexts that can happen within asphalted areas.

A system based on a vernacular language

“Panots” are the typical paving stones used to build Barcelona's sidewalks, since 1906, and they have become an unequivocal code indicating walking areas. The new design adapts the various original models of “panots”, so that they can be easily stencil painted, and turns them into a flexible graphic system, capable of adopting infinite forms in accordance with the diversity of urban spaces. The project parts from such vernacular language to generate a visual narrative with a personality of its own.

An adaptable and interpretable tool box

Every street is different, every neighbourhood lives a specific reality, every corner has its particular nature. Therefore, a single treatment of the intervened areas must be avoided: visually diverse solutions are projected by transforming the stiff grid of paving stones into an organic structure. The graphic system adapts through colour, scale, grades of figuration or abstraction in relation to the referred “panot”, and so on.

The project is envisioned as an open source tool box, presenting a series of resources which can be interpreted both by citizens and the teams in charge of performing the actions.

A custom typography to designate and communicate

The project also suggests getting back to a common practise in Barcelona: writing street names on the pavement to address pedestrians, instead of using the current street nameplates (which are adapted to the view from a vehicle). The modules obtained from the “panots” build a custom display typography, offering multiple variations and alternatives for each character. The typography is used to indicate public space usage, street names, schools, and so on; while it can communicate the undertaken actions, through digital media, spots, etc. Therefore, it becomes a tool for both graphic identity and communication, cohabiting with and reinforcing any tactical intervention.

This is a tactical project contributing to the strategic commitment for a new collective imagination in a new model of city, incorporating values adapted to our current reality, such as sustainable mobility, pedestrian empowerment, re-greening, citizen re-appropriation of streets, socialization of urban spaces, etc.

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Arauna is a graphic design studio based in Barcelona, funded in 2014 by Dani Rubio Arauna (Santander, 1986). They design custom visual narratives for each of their projects, which translate into versatile graphic systems that can be adapted to visual identities, spaces, publications, campaigns, etc. A great part of their work focuses on exploring connections between graphics and architectural spaces.

Their clients include Ferran Adrià, Camper, Centro Botín, El Celler de Can Roca, Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, Museo Picasso de Málaga, Damm, Generalitat de Catalunya, Ajuntament de Barcelona and Sant Joan de Déu Children Hospital.

Their projects have been appreciated with a number of international awards, such as Art Directors Club, ADC Europe, D&AD, Interior Design Magazine, Laus or Bienal Iberoamericana de Diseño. Since 2019, Arauna is a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI).

www.arauna.studio
Instagram @arauna_studio

Pictures by: Arnau Rovira @arnauroviravidal