What can surprise us with the square we pass every day? Is there no more (budgetary) salvation for once hard-surfaced spaces? Agata Wozniczka and Mateusz Adamczyk, a duo from Krakow's BUDCUD studio, wanting to encourage residents to rediscover urban nooks and crannies during this year's Concéntrico festival, created an unusual collection of urban furniture - a set of Urban Planters that symbolically restore greenery between buildings.
Urban furniture in the Plaza del Mercado in Logroño
© Javier Antón, Josema Cutillas
The history of the Plaza del Mercado in Spain's Logroño, a representative square in the city center, resembles the fate of many other such spaces in Poland (and elsewhere) - the formerly green, now shadeless and paved area is quite a challenge for residents and tourists who want to relax.
BudCud studio's proposal reinvents the Plaza del Mercado in Logroño
© BudCud
Throughout Europe, urban squares are being transformed into concreted, heated and impermeable plazas during pseudo-revitalization processes of public areas, thus disappearing urban biodiversity or the possibility of natural climate change mitigation, the architects say.
green urban furniture
© BudCud
And although the lack of comfort and shade provided by nature cannot be replaced, Mateusz Adamczyk and Agata Wozniczka took on the challenge of searching for an alternative solution through which public space could "green up" again:
Emphasizing the role of nature in the city, the "Saplings" installation "greened" public space anew using the means that architects use most skillfully - synthetic drawings of nature, written in the form of urban furniture, the authors of the project explain.
Urban furniture in the Plaza del Mercado in Logroño
© Javier Antón, Josema Cutillas
Made of ecological and biodegradable materials, the urban furniture, with its forms and colors evoking a variety of vegetation, is intended not only to symbolically restore greenery to thethe built-up fabric, but also, as the designers emphasize, to draw attention to the phenomenon of irresponsible disposal of greenery from common spaces, and to create more intimate urban interiors that facilitate interaction and make meetings more pleasant. They could also be used to map spaces, familiarizing residents with the idea of transforming places they know and studying changes in the behavior of their users when a green element appears in the environment.
Urban furniture in the Plaza del Mercado in Logroño
© Javier Antón, Josema Cutillas
Simple forms, abstractly replicating trees and shrubs, became spatial urban totems that served visitors to the plaza as picnic tables and seats, a playground, and spaces for games, flirting and conversation. [...] The "saplings" offered what the trees had previously provided - shade, rest and a meeting place, the architects added.
© Festival Internacional de Arquitectura y Diseño Concéntrico
You can read more about green urban furniture in an interview withAgata Wozniczka and Mateusz Adamczyk: Urban Planters. Multifunctional urban furniture of the BudCud project at the Concéntrico festival in Logroño.
