Outpost Office: Public Utilities

Public Utilities is the latest drawing in a series of large-scale public works by Outpost Office exploring the spatial potential of mark-making. Each installation utilizes GPS-controlled painting robots to create site-specific, building-size drawings at a 1:1 scale. The series employs measuring, delineating, and marking techniques to investigate architecture as the dynamic performance of spatial instructions. Each installation is water-soluble, non-toxic, and temporary, eschewing waste often associated with temporary architecture.

In Logroño, Outpost Office installed Public Utilities, a colorful installation inspired by modest utility markings on construction job sites. Often applied in bright, fluorescent colors, these preparatory markings indicate boundaries and provide instructions to workers. As instructions, these striking markings are usually indecipherable to passersby, but to the trained eye, they denote construction limits, survey markings, and utilities like power lines, gas, and communications. Public Utilities activated multiple public spaces, including Plaza Primero de Mayo and two area schools, CEIP Duquesa de la Victoria and IES Batalla de Clavijo, with dynamic inscriptions that suggest new programs and patterns of use for existing public spaces. Working at multiple scales, these public instructions suggested new organizations and pathways, but their precise use is open to civic interpretation. Visitors and residents observe and inhabit the enormous graphic pattern throughout the drawing process in a large public performance, all choreographed by a small drawing robot.

At its core, Public Utilities is part of an ongoing investigation into the civic potential of notation. Can we make architecture through drawing—not as instructions for building, but as space itself?

LOCATION: Plaza Primero de Mayo

LOCATION: CEIP Duquesa de la Victoria

LOCATION: IES BATALLA DE CLAVIJO

PROJECT CREDITS

Author: Outpost Office
Client: Concéntrico
Institutional support: MAS Context
Collaboration: Planea, Fundación Daniel y Nina Carasso, and the Centro Riojano de Innovación Educativa
Special Thanks: Turf Tank
Locations: Plaza Primero de Mayo, CEIP Duquesa de la Victoria, and IES Batalla de Clavijo, Logroño, Spain

PRESS

Maria-Cristina Florian, “Concéntrico 10 Opens with 20 Urban Installations to Explore in the Spanish City of Logroño,” ArchDaily, April 29, 2024.

“Concéntrico 10, en imágenes,” Arquitectura Viva, April 26, 2024.

Lea Zeitoun, “concéntrico 10 visualizes the future of cities with twenty interventions in logroño, spain,” designboom, April 26, 2024.

Teresa Herrero and Inés Martín Tiffon, “Logroño reflexiona sobre el futuro de las ciudades durante Concéntrico 10,” Interiores, April 26, 2024.

Estíbaliz Espinosa, “Todas las 'locuras' de Concéntrico 10,” La Rioja, April 25, 2024.

Iker Oroz, “Concéntrico: 10 Años Redescubriendo Logroño a Través del Diseño,” Manera, April 29, 2024.