The Superilla, an urban regeneration tool that is part of a plan for Barcelona, developed by the Agencia de Ecología Urbana, within the Urban Mobility Plan 2013-2018 was implemented today, one year ago.

This intervention, which allows to create new pedestrian areas and consequently new spaces for citizens, if implemented will greatly increase the public space availability in the city of Barcelona and it is therefore an important opportunity to test new principles to design the area.

As part of the Superilla pilot, IAAC had the occasion to play an active role, testing the potentials of advanced technologies, such as digital fabrication, virtual and augmented reality, and urban gaming, as a means to enhance citizen participation in urban design and deployment processes.

Poblejoc was an interactive installation conceived during the Active Public Space Workshop, co-founded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union, and designed as an urban game, with the aim of activating the Superilla’s public space.

The five urban furniture prototypes of the Poblejoc installation were developed during the one-week session tutored by IAAC and Noumena, where 16 international students designed and fabricated the wooden structures.

A few months later, during the Design for the Responsive City studio, IAAC video game experts and Master in City & Technology students have developed SuperBARRIO, a user-based video game which allows the citizens to visualize  the Superilla in a 3D environment and make a design proposal for the public space. The different proposal created a database that was then visualized on the map of the Superblock, allowing and extensive analysis of the citizen’s desires.

Also the Future Cities Studio of the CIEE Program has used the Superilla as an experimentation laboratory, exploring the relationship between city and water, and seeking innovative ways to improve this connection through speculative design and experimentation.