Surely, it is one of the most tedious and detested points of the entire Barcelona metro network. However, thousands of users must travel almost 240 meters daily to change from the yellow or purple line to the green one. To liven up and make this long corridor more pleasant for its users, TMB launched a contest at the beginning of the year for companies to present their innovative ideas to improve this point of the metro. A contest that already has a winner: the ARS GRÀCIA project. An interactive sound creation installation that uses artificial intelligence to generate music and images in real time based on the users who are in the interchange at that moment.
Thus, each person will become a musical note that will be integrated into the whole, creating sound patterns, visual effects, and luminous pulsations thanks to the magic and creativity of the artificial intelligence called ARS. With this installation, the almost 240-meter corridor will become a unique experience each time it is traversed, as the videos and sounds are generated according to the people and interactions that occur in the interchange at that moment.
Likewise, the proposal does not forget live music, an element that is already present in the current Passeig de Gràcia interchange and represents the only element that gives some life to this tedious corridor. The proposal suggests a space for live music performance, reserved for members of the Association of Street and Metro Musicians of Barcelona, where they can play not only with optimal acoustic conditions, but also with the possibility of enhancing and complementing their talent with the visual technology created by ARS.
This is the winning installation of the call opened by TMB and the Barcelona City Council at the beginning of the year, through the municipal foundation BIT Habitat, responsible for innovations in the city such as the 21st-century panot, together with the Barcelona Music Lab foundation. Through this contest, 52 companies and startups have presented their ideas and creations to try to make one of the neuralgic points of the metro network more bearable. A point where, moreover, conveyor belts could not be installed, like those found at the Diagonal stop ---another of the most frequented interchanges---, since the Passeig de Gràcia infrastructure is too narrow and only has space for a single direction.
The installation, designed by ARTIFICIA, a Catalan platform for the promotion and dissemination of the use of artificial intelligence in the arts, which has the support of the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (IIIA-CSIC), Kreomúsica and the Association of Street and Metro Musicians of Barcelona. For now, the installation will be tested for three months, starting in November, in only 35 of the current 237 meters of the transfer distance, to monitor its impact and acceptance by metro network users. The project will receive 50,000 in funding to carry out the installation, in addition to an additional 3,000 euros as the winning proposal of the competition launched by TMB and the City Council. The other two finalist projects, Atmósferas en Tránsito created by the collective we are Labels, and El Cànon de Barcelona, by the Flop Work team, will also receive 3,000 euros.
Passeig de Gràcia will not be the only stop to be transformed in the coming months. The Design Museum (DHub) will become the first public facility with direct access from the metro, specifically from the Glòries red line stop. Thus, in the style of cities like Paris, which has a station that leads directly into the impressive Louvre, Barcelona will also have direct access to one of the city's most emblematic facilities without the need to leave the metro.
This reform is part of the transformation of Glòries square, which has opened its large central park after years of transformation. A transformation inspired by the central role that Cerdà projected for this square in his urban planning, as he considered it a neuralgic point because three of the city's great avenues converge there: Diagonal, Gran Vía, and Meridiana. The new lobby, of 380 square meters, has also been the result of a public competition, promoted in this case by the DHub and the FAD and which has chosen the work presented by the architectural studio AMOO STUDIO SCP.
The project conceives an open-plan space, designed as an antechamber to the museum and a citizen meeting point where a station bar will also be installed. The renovation has a budget of more than one million euros and the forecast is that the works will begin at the beginning of 2026 with the aim of being inaugurated during the summer of that same year, coinciding with Barcelona's celebration as the world capital of architecture, a celebration in which the DHub will play a central role, being one of the venues for the World Congress of Architecture.