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Superficial interventions, profound changes
In Bon Pastor street in Barcelona, there is a small architectural jewel hidden in an alley in the heart of the city centre, it is the intervention that the artist Joan Brossa was made for the façade of the Colegio de Aparejadores y Arquitectos Técnicos de Barcelona (Association of Quantity Surveyors and Technical Architects of Barcelona).
It is a dark building on which the artist superimposed huge coloured letters with the name of the institution. In the space between the windows, the same letters are grouped vertically in a systematic, alphabetical order. Then, if you are capable of not breaking your neck and look up on the roof, you will see that a gigantic steel lobster rests on the building, designed by Brossa and made by the painter Josep Pla-Narbona.
When Brossa was asked about the choice of that insect, he remained silent, sketching one of his mischievous smiles, assuring that it was an “unconscious homage to the talent of the quantity surveyors”.
Such gestures remind us that a seemingly superficial intervention can completely change the perception of a space. And the same is true in digital design: sometimes the redesign of a single screen triggers internal debates that transform the organisation and the way its members work.
Because, even if our work aspires to be purely functional, it always lends itself to interpretation. Function ends up clashing, or overlapping, with meaning.