The course offers the necessary instruments to provide a general vision of the role of street furniture in shaping public space and at the same time incorporate the criteria to develop an urban equipment product in the context of a public space project. Complementarily, work on skills in the representation and communication of an urban furniture project.
The contents of the subject are developed in the first part of the course with greater dedication to theoretical tasks such as lectures and the analysis of the public spaces under study, complemented with individual exercises of intervention strategy in public space. As the course progresses, the theoretical sessions lose weight, and more time is devoted to the workshop and to the corrections of projects.
Throughout the course, different authors or representatives of publishing companies are invited to present their professional experience and, occasionally, a visit to a manufacturer and publisher of urban furniture is scheduled.
Learning aims
Train the student in relation to learning to look at and read the public space and know the relationship that occurs between urban elements and the city both from the demand that it generates and from the capacity of those to make new spaces emerge and create a city.
Analyse how to adapt to spaces with specific conditions and become familiar with the basic principles of urban elements as a product.
The first theoretical sessions are specified in the analysis of some public spaces in the city of Barcelona, where the generation of an Urban Elements catalogue is the consequence of a strategy capable of responding to each of the situations, with elements designed for a determined place and become a valid solution for the whole of the city.
A second theoretical session focused on learning about the publishing companies and specifically the case of Escofet 1886, offering an overview of the mechanisms by which a series of products, the result of a company policy or the professional attitude of a specific author, give rise to a series of urban elements capable of transcending their individuality.
The Design Workshop proposes a series of intervention strategy exercises in public space, to be developed individually during class hours, to introduce the student to the different aspects that affect the public space project.
In the second Design Workshop, the existing built context of a significant public space in the city of Barcelona is analysed in order to discover the mechanisms through which urban elements operate. In this context, a reform proposal is drawn up, emphasizing the capacity of urban elements to strategically modify pre-existing circumstances. We know that public space is the place where the city is represented and this can be evaluated above all by the intensity and quality of the social relationships it facilitates and also by the ability to stimulate interaction among its users. A quality urban public space must have physical elements that generate exchanges that enrich and humanize the most everyday events. This mission falls mainly on urban elements and, therefore, it is a matter of insisting on proposals in which we deliberately give the greatest emphasis to the design of urban elements and that urban furniture acquires an essential role in the transformation of space where the human factor stand out above other issues.
Teaching Methodology
Conceived in an eminently practical way, the course articulates its contents with introductory theoretical sessions and a design workshop. The introduction of the subject through some theoretical classes will allow us to approach the particularities of urban furniture as a design object and its contribution to the configuration of the urban landscape.
The design workshop constitutes the backbone of the course through which students must develop the necessary project mechanisms for the formulation of proposals for urban furniture elements as an urban acupuncture mechanism for the consolidated public space. As a first action, develop a program based on the observation of what users do in the public space that is the object of the transformation project, as well as a collection of the impressions that citizens have of the place and their wishes. Also of the problems and possible solutions to redefine the space based on the premise that a public space project is not always an act of creation finished in itself, but a link in a longer evolutionary chain, where the user also designs.
Learning Activities
- Four theoretical master sessions
- Information search, analysis and documentary production. (10%)
- Four intervention strategy exercises in public space (20%)
- Design Workshop 1 (70%)
- Individual and group exhibitions
- Visits to publishing companies and production centers
- Product and project presentations by external professionals
- Tutorials "on-line"
Assessment system
Continuous Assessment
The aim of continuous assessment is for the student to be able to know their academic progress throughout their learning process to enable them to improve on it.
After the second enrolment, assessment in the subject may, at the teacher’s decision, consist of a cumulative test, which allows an assessment of the learning results set out in the subject teaching guide. In this case, the mark for the subject will correspond to the cumulative test mark.
General rules regarding assessment
- For a subject to be considered to have been passed, students must obtain a minimum mark of 5.0.
- Once the subject has been passed, it may not be reassessed.
- A “Not Assessable” (NA) mark will be given to any student who has not submitted all the learning evidence or who has not attended 80% of the classes and has not provided justification for the absences. In the case of justified absence, the student must contact the teacher when returning to determine the recuperation of the activities they did not attend.
- If the student commits any irregularity that may lead to a significant variation in the mark of an assessment activity, that assessment activity will be awarded a 0, irrespective of any disciplinary process that may be brought. If various irregularities occur in the assessment activities of the same subject, the final mark for that subject will be 0.
Assessment criteria
Accustomed as we are to proposals that base their effects on the alteration of the whole, the most valued proposals will be precisely the projects developed within a logic of urban acupuncture, catalysts on a small scale in proportion to the great effect they can generate. Proposals with the will to transform the space suitable for debate in a real professional environment and capable of becoming a product for a publishing company.
The student must deliver and publicly present a first analysis of the public space that represents 10% of the grade.
The four exercises of intervention strategy in the public space of individual writing and done in class hours account for 20% of the grade. Finally, the project written within the workshop and prepared individually or in a group of two students, presented and defended orally, has a weight in the final grade of 70%.
Unexcused absences of 20% of the classes implies a provisional grade of "no show". Students have the possibility of reviewing the project open when they receive the provisional grade before the final grade.
Review process
A review may be requested from the corresponding teaching staff and will take place in the week stated in the teaching calendar.
Reassessment process
General rules
Specific rules regarding the course
- No reassessment systems are considered in the cases of external practical placements, final degree projects and courses / learning activities that by their practical nature do not permit this.
- To take part in the reassessment, the student must have first been assessed for a series of activities whose weight is equivalent to a minimum of two-thirds of the total mark of the course or module.
- For the reassessment, a specific refurbish public space project exercise and the design of a proposal for urban furniture in its context is foreseen.
- FAD.Fomento de las Artes y el Diseño. Barcelona 2009. La U urbana: El libro blanco de las calles de Barcelona.
- AAVV. La reconquista d ’Europa: espacio público urbano. Barcelona: Consorci del CCCB, 1999
- Serra, J.M. elementos urbanos: mobiliario i microarquitectura. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 1996
- Serra, J.M. manual d’elements urbans:mobiliari i microarquitectura. Barcelona: Diputació de Barcelona, 2000
- Carles Brotó i Comerma. Mobiliario urbano: nuevos conceptos. Barcelona 2010. Leading International Key Services
- Diputació de Barcelona. Els carrers de la democracia:L’espai públic de les noves ciutats. Barcelona 2001
- Sophie Barbaux. Objets urbains: vivre la ville autrement. Paris, France. ICI Consultants
- Jan Gehl. Ciudades para la gente. Buenos Aires 2014. Infinito
- Jan Gehl. La humanización del espacio. Barcelona 2006. Reverte.
- Danae Esparza Lozano. 2014. Tesis doctoral. Programa de Doctorado Espacio Público y Regeneración Urbana. Universitat de Barcelona.
- Paisea, revista de paisajismo. Mobiliario urbano. Núm.15. diciembre 2010. Paisea revista S.L.
- Catálogos de mobiliario urbano de empresas editoras:
Recursos
- Recull d’articles sobre espai públic i elements urbans publicats en revistes especialitzades.
- Recull d’articles de premsa, plànols i fotografies dels espais públics de la ciutat de Barcelona a analitzar.
- Catàleg Escofet. Urban Life 2019.
Specific skills
CE1 Analizar los objetos, comunicaciones y espacios habitables para detectar problemas de diseño, aportar soluciones alternativas y evaluar la viabilidad social, tecnológica y económica.
CE2 Evaluar usos y programar funciones orientados a la concepción y formalización de proyectos de diseño.
CE3 Sintetizar aquellos conocimientos y habilidades de expresión plástica, de técnicas de representación y de materiales y tecnologías productivas que permitan plantear y desarrollar proyectos de diseño.
CE4 Utilizar las técnicas básicas de expresión plástica (dibujo, color y volumen) para representar y crear formas en dos o tres dimensiones.
CE5 Dominar las técnicas de representación gráfica de espacios y volúmenes, planos y superficies características del diseño.
CE7 Demostrar que entiende los materiales, sus calidades, los procesos y los costes de fabricación.
CE11 Demostrar comprender el funcionamiento del entorno económico, empresarial e institucional en el cual se contratan y desarrollan profesionalmente los proyectos y las actividades de diseño.
CE13 Planificar, organizar, gestionar y administrar el desarrollo de proyectos de diseño, tanto en el marco del trabajo profesional autónomo como en el de las organizaciones empresariales o institucionales.
CE17 Exponer y razonar, de forma oral y escrita, los resultados y los procesos de trabajo de los objetos de diseño propios.
CE18 Interpretar y valorar críticamente productos finales y proyectos de diseño tanto propios como ajenos.
Transversal skills
CT1 Capacidad de comunicación oral y escrita en la lengua nativa y en otras lenguas como por ejemplo el inglés que permita trabajar en un contexto internacional.
CT3 Demostrar, conocer y utilizar correctamente las fuentes documentales y la bibliografía necesaria tanto para la proyección como para el análisis y crítica razonada del diseño.
CT5 Dominar el medio informático y las tecnologías digitales.
CT6 Capacidad para trabajar en equipo y aptitudes para el diálogo con los diferentes agentes y disciplinas que pueden intervenir en el desarrollo de un proyecto de diseño.
CT7 Capacidad para coordinar, dirigir y liderar grupos de trabajo alrededor de un proyecto de diseño, o bien donde el diseño ocupe un lugar relevante.
CT8 Capacidad de iniciativa y espíritu emprendedor.
CT9 Capacidad resolutiva y de toma de decisiones.
CT10 Motivación por la calidad, tanto en los planteamientos conceptuales y argumentales, como en la resolución formal y en los detalles del acabado final de un proyecto de diseño.
CT12 Capacidad para la integración y síntesis de conocimientos adquiridos en contextos y situaciones diferentes, con flexibilidad y creatividad.
CT13 Orientar la acción del diseño a partir de valores de respeto al entorno ambiental y con criterios de sostenibilidad.
CT14 Valorar y fomentar el uso social del entorno y de la comunicación con atención especial a la accesibilidad para grupos de usuarios y receptores diferentes.
CT15 Valorar y preservar el patrimonio cultural, artístico y paisajístico.
CT16 Demostrar que se poseen valores y principios deontológicos propios de la profesión.
CT17 Demostrar que conoce los fenómenos innovadores y los nuevos lenguajes y propuestas culturales.
CT18 Capacidad de autogestionar el desarrollo de un itinerario profesional.
CT19 Demostrar una disposición afectiva positiva hacia los valores estéticos y las calidades formales del entorno material y visual.