Street furniture in Barcelona

The Street furniture in Barcelona is managed by the Department of Ecology, Urban Planning and Mobility of the City Council of Barcelona. It developed in accordance with the progress made in urban planning of Barcelona as a whole and, in general, with the historical and territorial evolution of the city, and in line with other defining factors of public space such as architecture, urban infrastructures and the adaptation and maintenance of natural or construction spaces. Although their main characteristic has always been functionality, as a general rule they have often been objects of design and aesthetic consideration, since they furnish the public space where urban society develops.
The urban evolution of Barcelona has been constant since its foundation in Ancient Rome to the present day, although it has been since the 19th century when it was accentuated thanks to the Cerdá plan and the aggregation of neighboring municipalities. It was also by the end of that century when the street furniture began to have a special consideration and to be the object of design and planning, thanks to the work of the successive people in charge of Buildings and Ornamentation of the City Council such as Antoni Rovira i Trias and Pere Falqués.
It encompasses a series of elements for the urban management of the city and the planning and execution of all the factors related to the adaptability of the physical environment to human life and the development of society, such as street light, benches, waste container, post boxes, fountains, traffic lights, public transport stops, pavement, flower boxes, kiosks, parking meters, payphone among many other objects and elements of micro-architecture.
Barcelona has an area of 102.16 km, 25.7% of which is public space (16.3% streets and the rest are green areas). In 2009, there were 703,540 urban elements in Barcelona's public spaces, one for every 8 m of sidewalk.
As a general rule, urban elements must meet certain criteria: design, based on aesthetic quality, authenticity and originality; functionality and ergonomics; easy maintenance and low cost; accessibility and safety; and social and environmental sustainability. For their installation and maintenance, a study must be made of the terrain and social needs, which is usually based on pre-established municipal regulations. Depending on the element to be installed, the ideal material must be studied (the most commonly used are wood, stone, concrete, metal, glass and plastic), its resistance, its maintenance –one factor to take into account is vandalism–, its placement and its use. Other factors that have been considered in recent times have been sustainability and multi-functionality. Its economic cost should also be considered in terms of its technical characteristics, the investment-amortization ratio, its purchase and manufacturing cost, its assembly and installation, its maintenance and its consumption of water, gas or electricity. Finally, a factor to take into account is its accessibility and ease of use, especially in consideration of people with reduced mobility or some type of physical or sensory disability.
There is a wide variety of urban elements, which can be classified according to their function:
Common urbanization elements:
Elements for pedestrian protection:
Signaling:
Lighting and traffic control:
Urban furniture:
Public service elements:
Information and propaganda elements:
Commercial elements:
The concept of street furniture is relatively contemporary, so it cannot be extrapolated to past times, times in which no special interest was placed on the common elements of civic coexistence. From medieval or modern times there are still some fountains that, although they were for public use, were of individualized construction, so we cannot speak of a systematized project to regulate their use and distribution. Some examples are: the fountain of Santa Ana, in the avenue of Portal de l'Àngel with Cucurulla (1356); the fountain of San Justo, in the square of the same name (1367); the fountain of Santa Maria, in the square of the same name (1403) and the fountain of Puertaferrisa, in the street of the same name (1680).
Another precedent of public lighting is nighttime illumination, which was carried out by means of tederos installed on public thoroughfares, with fuel made of resinous wood or pitch. In 1599 Barcelona had 60 tederos in its public streets, some of which are still preserved, such as those in the Plaça del Rei or in the church of Santa Maria del Mar. Later on, it evolved to lanterns of fuel oils, of which in 1752 there were 1500 scattered around the city; due to their cost, they were only lit on dark nights.
Attention to urban elements began incipiently in the 18th century, when the urban environment began to be considered worthy of beautification and accommodation of citizens' needs, and the regulation of aspects such as sewage and sanitation networks, or the separation between pedestrians and vehicular traffic, began.
However, it was in the 19th century when street furniture became an integral part of any urban planning process in the city and became the object of design and special planning for its construction according to pre-established needs and a predetermined location. This was especially helped by factors such as the new industrial manufacturing processes that emerged at that time and the use of materials such as iron, which allowed mass production and resulted in greater strength and durability.
During that century, the definitive separation of public roads between the roadway and the sidewalk for pedestrians was established, which offered a perfect platform for the placement of a series of elements aimed at regulating civic activities and accommodating the space to the needs of the population. Among the first elements installed were benches, of which the first public ones were stone ones installed in the Paseo de San Juan (1797), the Garden of the General (1815) and various squares located in the lots left by burned or disentailed convents in 1835–1836; fountains, which proliferated at this time thanks to the canalization of the waters of Moncada by the Marquis of Campo Sagrado, although they were individualized fountains and were not yet built in series, as would later become common; and the kiosks, whether for the sale of newspapers, flowers, pets, lottery, drinks or other products –including occasional ones, such as firecrackers for the festival of San Juan, ice cream in summer or chestnuts in autumn– of which the most paradigmatic are those located on La Rambla, which appeared in the middle of the 19th century.
This hatching of urban elements was favored by the development of new technologies, such as gas lighting, initiated in 1842 by the company Sociedad Catalana para el Alumbrado por Gas, being the first Spanish city to use it. The first illuminated streets were La Rambla, Ferran street and San Jaime square. In 1845 there were already 500 gas lanterns, and at that date standing street lights appeared. In 1880 electric lighting appeared, gradually replacing gas lighting on public streets: in 1882 the first street lights were placed in the Plaça de Sant Jaume, and between 1887 and 1888 La Rambla and the Passeig de Colom were electrified. For a time, between 1885 and 1912, oil, gas and electric lights coexisted: in 1905 there were 711 oil, 13,378 gas and 228 electric streetlights; in 1913 oil disappeared, and in 1967 gas. The generalization of electric lighting did not take place until the beginning of the 20th century, with the invention of the light bulb, and was not completed until 1929.
In Barcelona, as in the rest of Europe and unlike American cities, street furniture was controlled exclusively by the city council, which established careful regulations for its installation. The new urban products were entering the market through catalogs or their diffusion in the international exhibitions that used to take place at that time, such as the one held in Barcelona in 1888. Companies such as the French Durenne or Val d'Osne, or the German Mannesmann, placed their products all over Europe, and helped to make urban furniture a fashionable object of both practical and aesthetic appreciation.
The introduction of street furniture in Barcelona was favored by Ildefonso Cerdá, who in his Cerdà Plan already included many of these elements as integral parts of the urban fabric. This was probably influenced by his visit to Paris, where elements such as kiosks, clocks, fountains and other urban elements were common and were the object of special planning. The Parisian influence was preponderant in this first stage of Barcelona's street furniture, not only in terms of inspiration but also in terms of specific commissions from French companies, such as the Ville de Paris-type street lights commissioned in 1866 from the Val d'Osne foundry, or the Montmartre-type wall lanterns with lanterns, of which there are still several in the old quarter.
Another pioneer in the introduction of street furniture was Josep Fontserè, author of the project of the Parc de la Ciutadella (1872), which included some innovative design elements, some of which were designed by his assistant, a young Antoni Gaudí who worked as a draughtsman to pay for his studies. His work was also a fountain-fountain-clock in the Mercat del Born (1875), made of cast iron; it had a base with a fountain with spouts coming out of swan figures, on which were four sculptures of nereids holding gas lanterns, with a clock on top. This design was very similar to the crowning of a monumental fountain designed by Gaudí for the Plaça de Catalunya as a degree project for the 1876–1877 academic year at the Barcelona School of Architecture, which suggests that it could have been the work of the architect from Reus, who at that time was working as a draughtsman for Fontserè.
Gaudí himself was responsible for one of his first projects, the Girossi kiosks, a commission from a merchant that would have consisted of twenty kiosks scattered throughout Barcelona, each of which would have included public toilets, a flower stall and glass panels for advertising, as well as a clock, calendar, barometer and thermometer; however, it was never realized. Another unrealized project of Gaudí's was the electric lighting for the Muralla de Mar (1880), which would have consisted of eight large iron street light decorated with plant motifs, friezes, coats of arms and names of battles and Catalan admirals. Even so, the modernist architect made two models of street light that still survive: those of the Plaça Reial (1878) and those of Pla de Palau (1889).
On the other hand, in the field of design, it is worth mentioning the collection of drawings entitled Álbum enciclopédico-pintoresco de los industriales (1857), by Lluís Rigalt, a compendium of drawings of various industrial designs made at the time in the fields of gardening, casting, marble and stone work, cabinetmaking, jewelry, architecture and applied arts.
Despite these early precedents, street furniture did not begin to be systematically planned until the appointment in 1871 of Antoni Rovira i Trias as head of Buildings and Ornamentation of the City Council. This architect was the first to make a special effort to combine aesthetics and functionality for this type of urban adornment. Until the year of his death in 1889, he was responsible for a large number of products installed on the public streets. Some of them were imported, generally from France: in 1876 he replaced the fountain in the Plaça Reial with an ornamental fountain manufactured by the French company Durenne, the Three Graces Fountain; in 1877 he began the installation of public urinals also of Parisian origin known as vespasian (vespasienne), made of metal with a circular body with a capacity for six people, above which rose a hexagonal section for advertising, crowned by a cupulite. However, he also personally designed a large number of these elements: in 1875 he designed an iron and palaster table for the sale of flowers on La Rambla, where he also placed a wooden kiosk for drinks in 1877, the Canaletes kiosk; In 1877 he designed a fountain for the Plaça de Jonqueres that later spread throughout the city, made in series by La Maquinista Terrestre y Marítima; in 1882 he placed some public urinals on the Paseo Nacional (now Paseo de Juan de Borbón), and the following year he designed another model of urinal inspired by a model of the New York firm Mott Iron Works, which was distributed throughout the city; between 1882 and 1886 he designed the railing over the retaining walls of the railroad ditch in Aragón street, as well as the railings, stone benches, street light and iron jugs of the Passeig de Colom; and in 1886 he was also in charge of the railings, ornamental jugs and finishing details of the Salón de San Juan (today's Passeig de Lluís Companys).
Rovira's successor was Pere Falqués, who continued to embellish the city with original designs of great artistic value, in keeping with the modernist style in vogue at the time. Thus, in 1889 he designed a fountain-farola for Canaletes, at the beginning of the Rambla near the Plaça de Catalunya, which has become an icon of the city; the model was later extended to other places in the municipality. Near the Canaletes fountain he installed in 1890 a kiosk for drinks, which replaced Rovira's wooden one. In 1893 he designed another fountain-farola for the Plaça de Sant Pere, of Gothic inspiration. In 1896 he designed a kiosk for resting and stopping cars with a clock and public telephone, located on the corner of Gran Vía and Paseo de Gracia. In 1905 he designed the Bancs-Fanals of Paseo de Gracia, as well as the street lights of Plaça del Cinc d'Oros, which today are located on Gaudí Avenue.
During this period, numerous models of wall lanterns, column lanterns and candelabras appeared, with different technologies that evolved from gas to electricity. Wall street lights were available with lanterns (square or hexagonal) or with a hanging globe (one, two or three); street lights could have a column and lantern luminaire (circular, square or hexagonal), globe or with a "lyre" type top; and candelabras could have from two to six lanterns, circular, hexagonal or lyre. There was also a model of column lantern with a built-in mailbox, located on the Via Layetana and disappeared in 1913. Other models had supports for tram cables for a time.
At the end of the 19th century the streets began to be urbanized with flagstone sidewalks and cobblestone sidewalks, which were replaced in the 1960s by asphalt. The cobblestones were usually made of Montjuic stone, 25 cm in diameter, while the sidewalk tiles were usually made of cement mortar, in 20 x 20 cm tiles, with various designs including one with flowers created by Josep Puig i Cadafalch or one with marine motifs created by Antoni Gaudí (Gaudí tile). In 1906 the City Council approved six types of sidewalk tiles, made from 1916 by the Escofet company, made of hydraulic cement. In 1916 tiles with letters also appeared, which allowed the names of the streets to be written on the sidewalks; they stopped being installed in the 1960s, since when they have gradually disappeared, although there are still some examples, such as in Londres and París streets.
After the period of splendor of urban furniture led by Rovira and Falqués, the successive city councils that governed the city did not take a special interest in this field, beyond the maintenance of existing elements or their replacement by others of little creativity. Occasional exceptions were the urbanization of Avinguda Diagonal or the renovation of the urban landscape for the 1929 International Exposition.
In the 1920s, several subway public toilets were installed to replace the unhygienic Vespasian toilets, such as those in Plaça Catalunya, Plaça Urquinaona and Plaça Teatro. Those in Plaça Urquinaona (1920-1998) also included showers and various services, such as a hairdresser, manicurist, bootblack, perfumery and notary, as well as a lottery stand and payphone.
In 1928, with a view to the celebration of the International Exposition, the first public waste container were installed, the Tulipa model, consisting of a metal cylinder with vertical bars that opened like a flower at the top. They were a novelty at the time, since the awareness of street cleanliness was not very well developed at that time. For the Exposition, some temporary street lights called "dancer" were also installed in the middle of the streets, suspended from cables with tensors placed from façade to façade. After the event they were removed, although in 1990 some were reinstalled on Avinguda del Tibidabo.
In 1929 the first traffic lights were installed to regulate vehicular traffic: the first was located at the intersection of Balmes and Provenza streets, and by the end of the year there were ten operating throughout the city, regulated by agents of the Guardia Urbana. The Civil War meant a halt in the installation of traffic lights, which was reactivated in the 1950s. In 1958 the first synchronization took place, in Via Layetana. In 1984 the Traffic Control Center was opened, which in 2004 controlled 1,500 traffic light crossings.(88)
In 1930 some curious benches designed by Félix de Azúa were installed on the Paseo de San Juan that contained books inside, the so-called "library benches", which had glass cases on their central backrest inside which housed books for free reading, dispensed by a civil servant. After the Civil War the benches lost this function, and in the 1950s they disappeared in a renovation of the promenade.
During the Franco era, pragmatic and economic criteria predominated over aesthetic ones, together with a lack of coordination in the placement of these elements in the public space. Among the few novelties in these years, we can mention the continuous jet fountains, of which there were two main varieties: between 1940 and 1960 several fountains of artificial stone were installed, with a tripartite base, octagonal shaft and circular bowl with floral reliefs, from which a vertical jet fell into the same bowl; the second was between 1960 and 1970, made of pink conglomerate, with a circular base and conical section shaft.
During the 1950s and 1960s, the municipal architect Adolf Florensa put special emphasis on the design of new pavements for various areas of the city, especially in the Ciutat Vella district. The result was the Pavement of several emblematic places in the city: that of Plaça Sant Jaume (1953), made with dark basalt in combination with white limestone, which forms a grid of squares that inscribe a rectangle on the perimeter of the square; that of Plaça de Catalunya (1959), which with terrazzo slabs of different colors (white, maroon, green and cream) forms an oval pattern with six trapezoids inside and a star or wind rose in the center; and the Pavement of La Rambla, made with vibrazo of undulating shapes (1968).
In 1974 a renovation of Passeig de Gràcia was carried out in which garden benches made of trencadís ceramics were added, in imitation of the modernist benches designed by Pere Falqués. That same year Òscar Tusquets and Lluís Clotet designed the Catalano model bench, made of steel, with a deployé seat painted with silver-colored polyester resin, and with an ergonomic profile inspired by the undulating bench in Park Güell designed by Gaudí; it was the first exponent of a change of attitude and a commitment to design and innovation in urban furniture.
The situation changed with the arrival of democracy and the new socialist governments in the city, which bet on art and design as a sign of the city's identity. A campaign was then launched both to recover the historical heritage and to install new elements in which design predominated as a defining factor of the new urban complements. To this end, the Urban Elements Service was created in 1991, under the Projects and Works Department of the Barcelona City Council, whose main objectives were to establish criteria for the selection, placement, standardization and renovation of urban elements with a clear commitment to design and modernity. Three main guidelines were adopted: to recover the old designs originating in the 19th century, such as romantic benches, cast iron fountains and street lights; to take the municipal initiative as the main promoter of urban projects; and to design specific urban furniture for each project, as one more element of any urban intervention. At the head of the new department was Màrius Quintana, responsible for the selection of urban furniture and its awarding through public tenders to new designs by the most prestigious architects and designers. The urban projects of this period, according to Quintana, "signified an increase in the level of design and a commitment to modernity and innovation in both spaces and urban furniture".
A clear example was the award in 1986 of the new bus shelters (Pal-li model) for bus stops to the design by Josep Lluís Canosa, Elías Torres and José Antonio Martínez Lapeña, a practical but at the same time innovative, aesthetic and contemporary design. Shaped like a baldachin, they consist of a tubular steel structure with a roof and a yellow polyester bench. This model also combined functionality with economy, since the incorporation of advertising –thanks to Jean-Claude Decaux's idea– made it possible to pay for its maintenance, in a perfect combination that was extended to other elements of the city.
Since then, many architects and designers have created different models of street furniture for the city: Jaume Bach and Gabriel Mora (Barcina planter, 1982); Beth Galí (Lamparaalta street light, 1983, with Màrius Quintana); Antoni Roselló (Marítim model of ONCE kiosk, 1986); Jordi Henrich and Olga Tarrasó (Pep street light, 1988; Nu bench, 1991); Albert Viaplana and Helio Piñón (U bench, 1988); Josep Maria Civit (Telefónica call shop, 1989); Jaume Artigues (Levit bench, 1989); Leopoldo Milá Sagnier (Montseny bench, 1990); Pedro Barragán (Prim street light, 1991); Enric Batlle and Joan Roig (Atlantida fountain, 1991); Montserrat Periel (Linea railing, 1993); Andreu Arriola and Carme Fiol (G bench, 1995; Sarastro fountain, 1995); Enric Pericas (Bus Platform, 1995); Moisés Gallego and Franc Fernández (Condal newsstand, 1996); Norman Foster (Foster canopy, 1998); Elías Torres and José Antonio Martínez Lapeña (Lama fountain, 2004); Terradas Arquitectes (Diagonal tile, 2014); etc.
One of the most important factors considered in the design of urban furniture in recent years has been accessibility criteria, for the elimination of architectural barriers that hindered the transit of people with physical disabilities, or the installation of special signage for the blind. Another important factor has been the criteria of sustainability, energy efficiency and respect for the environment. An example of this has been the new bus stops introduced in 2010 that incorporate a solar panel, the so-called "solar information stop" (PSI), which incorporates a digital panel that works with GPS to display the waiting time of the buses.