Outline was part of a project that was organised simultaneously by four museums at four locations and consisted of temporary interventions by four architects' practices. In Barcelona the action space selected was the Plaça del Angels that had been newly created in the course of erecting a museum of contemporary art and lies in Raval, a socially underprivileged inner city district. The contribution consisted of a double yellow line interrupted at regular intervals that was applied at an absolute height of three metres to all surfaces bordering the open space. This simple measure could be interpreted on different levels of content and space creating a dense network of meaning– also in connection with the works of the other teams. The most immediate effect was to make visible the urban square, which had only existed for a short time and was still unfamiliar, its dimensions became legible and its spatial and social heterogeneity were overlaid by the unifying element of the line. In addition to showing the extent of the Plaça, Outline also describes its changes in level (topography) and thus creates a relationship between passers-by and the qualities of the surface that everyone walks across. A further aspect of the intervention affects the handling and the meaning of surfaces in the public context as a place for messages, symbols, signs – whether these are official notices, sub-cultural graffiti or political slogans – and their recoding to create a new perception of space. Additionally, the use of a graphic code derived from the area of street markings has an inherent repeated ambiguity: due to its colour and proportion we immediately decipher the double line as a boundary that must not be bridged or driven over. On the other hand, the fact that it is interrupted signalises a certain permeability that flouts the symbolic border, creating a connection that is not, in fact, permitted. The application of street markings to vertical surfaces causes an overlaying of the usual image of the street with a network of largely informal agreements in the city, focussing again the view of public space as a place of constant intervention.

Eva Guttmann