Street furniture in Barcelona

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.

[3] 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.

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.

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.

[57] 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;[58] 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;[59] 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.

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.

[57] 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.

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.

[71] 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.

[72] 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.

[79] 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.

[78] 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.

[85] 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.

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;[91] 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;[92] and the Pavement of La Rambla, made with vibrazo of undulating shapes (1968).

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.