U-SMART
TOYS
SUMMARY
In the spring of 2015 the Barcelona City Council started a programme to partially close to traffic two of the main streets in Barcelona: Diagonal and Passeig de Gràcia. The initiative came along with the opening of the new design for those areas, with more pedestrian sidewalks instead of traffic lanes. Many activities were planned in areas usually dedicated to cars.
In the central part of Passeig de Gràcia, the most exclusive street in Barcelona, just in front of Casa Milà, a small company of little white animals took the sidewalk. Even if they looked like they could start walking any moment, they were not moving yet. Instead, they made children run around them. They were the new U-Smart Toys, a new urban outdoor toy with which children interact and… get tired.
During those Sundays of March and April, U-Smart Toys were playing with children, who were enthusiastic with their new friends from the city. The mischievous Light Bug modules were passing colour lights to each other and children were running after them to catch it by pressing touch sensors and avoiding the proximity sensors.
Smaller children were playing with the Bubble Bug, the loving robotic rabbit, which was restlessly producing soap bubbles if children were powering up the wheels at his sides. Other children were meanwhile blowing out those bubbles in endless and rewarding jumps.
Paying attention from a side, tall and stately, with a five-metre high balloon on top of it, the Air Bug was silently calling every passer-by to come and join the team. It was a landmark to make the ensemble visible from every part of Passeig de Gràcia, while waiting for its own electronics to provide him with a new and more entertaining life as the curator of statues games, his final destination.
They were the first U-Smart Toys to hit the city and feedback from children playing with them is being used to redesign and rebuild new modules that will spread through the city, looking for children to leave their consoles and computers and go downstairs to play with them.
In the spring of 2015 the Barcelona City Council started a programme to partially close to traffic two of the main streets in Barcelona: Diagonal and Passeig de Gràcia. The initiative came along with the opening of the new design for those areas, with more pedestrian sidewalks instead of traffic lanes. Many activities were planned in areas usually dedicated to cars.
In the central part of Passeig de Gràcia, the most exclusive street in Barcelona, just in front of Casa Milà, a small company of little white animals took the sidewalk. Even if they looked like they could start walking any moment, they were not moving yet. Instead, they made children run around them. They were the new U-Smart Toys, a new urban outdoor toy with which children interact and… get tired.
During those Sundays of March and April, U-Smart Toys were playing with children, who were enthusiastic with their new friends from the city. The mischievous Light Bug modules were passing colour lights to each other and children were running after them to catch it by pressing touch sensors and avoiding the proximity sensors.
Smaller children were playing with the Bubble Bug, the loving robotic rabbit, which was restlessly producing soap bubbles if children were powering up the wheels at his sides. Other children were meanwhile blowing out those bubbles in endless and rewarding jumps.
Paying attention from a side, tall and stately, with a five-metre high balloon on top of it, the Air Bug was silently calling every passer-by to come and join the team. It was a landmark to make the ensemble visible from every part of Passeig de Gràcia, while waiting for its own electronics to provide him with a new and more entertaining life as the curator of statues games, his final destination.
They were the first U-Smart Toys to hit the city and feedback from children playing with them is being used to redesign and rebuild new modules that will spread through the city, looking for children to leave their consoles and computers and go downstairs to play with them.
Description
Outdoor Urban Toys
Site
Passeig de Gràcia, Barcelona
Promoter
U-Smart Toys
Year
2015
Architects
Lagula Arquitectes
Main Collaborators
Aether (Electronics); Barraca (Construction); Oliver Martínez (Photography)