Wind Caricature – Active Public Space, Introductory design studio, Plaza Espanya

Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia, Fall 2015­­­

Wind caricature, a drawing machine, is developed as part of Active Public Space, a 10 week-long design studio. This studio is a speculation on the traffic-free future of the main public plazas of Barcelona.

With 3 vectors, “Energy, Technology and Society”, the studio explored a bottom-up design strategy rooted in automatic and in-deterministic processes, initially in drawing, then as a mean to program and activate public space.

Team members:
Borislava Lyubenova – Prajakta Panchal

Tutor: Edouard Cabay
Assistant tutor: Rodrigo Aguirre
With help from: Angel Muñoz, Pablo Barquin, Carmen Aquilar Wedge, Ramin Shambayati

The drawing machine channelizes the movement of the pen with wind speed and wind direction. The speed of the fans placed around the machine is arduino controlled and the fans can be moved around to change the wind direction.

Drawing machine – drawing

The second part of this studio included data collection of public activities of Plaza Espanya, Barcelona. Since Plaza Espanya, today, is a transit hub, the frequency and number of people walking with suitcases was collected and visually represented in a map.

ActivePublicSpace – Plaza Espanya – people with suitcases

By combining the data collection of activities of Plaza Espanya and the concepts of drawing machines of 5 sub-groups, the team of 10 students further developed a proposal for Plaza Espanya as a hub for public activities, in an attempt to retain its historical importance.