WRITERS MURAL PROJECTS AT LES CORTS (BARCELONA

Abstract

Since 2013, the Les Corts district has developed the policy to use some enclosing walls between buildings or building fences as a temporary support for the realization of murals. Its subject Catalan literature. Every year we choose a number of writers on which the mural shall deal.

In the first two editions, the idea of using an expectant wall either for demolition or for new building actions, was met while guaranteeing temporary murals. The expressive language used was graffiti.

POLIS Research Centre was commissioned to carry out the actions of Literary Mural planned for 2015. The proposed wall is located at Avenida de Chile; it is permanent and is the closing wall that delimits the Polo Club with the Avenue. Unlike previous proposals, this wall is enormous, approximately 400 meters long by an average of 4 meters high. At the top, the wall includes a box wood wall that interferes with its visuals. Its surface is in disrepair and logistics for action is complicated when the wall is attached to the the tram route what would force work exclusively at night.

A first analysis of the wall, its location and context, clearly show that no intervention should be based on the language of street art, and required a project aiming to permanence, and that could become a work of public art. We assess, too, that an Urban Design international and interdisciplinary, was not suitable to perform a graffiti preformance, because of skills and abilities, could raise an artistic solution complementing the urban design of the area. The Association of Residents of the area when knowing the idea of the District reported a total rejection of this intervention, especially if carried out in the style of those made in previous years. So the project was paralyzed, but the Research Centre and Coordination of the Master in Urban Design, understood that it was a good team project exercise to develop in the framework of the course in Public Art Theory.