Accessible signage guide green spaces

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268704

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Submitted

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NEW EUROPEAN BAUHAUS RISING STARS : concepts or ideas submitted by young talents (aged 30 or less)

Project title

Accessible signage guide green spaces

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Description

The Environment’s departament of the City of A Coruña, understood it needed to provide the city with a unique and more accessible signage to all people. For this reason, they hired me as project and accessibility director. Signage is essential in the orientation in the space. A correct application provides greater accessibility in public spaces. As an architect specialized in universal accessibility, I proposed a universal signaling system,accesible to all people, with or without disabilities.

Where is your concept/idea being developed or intended to be implemented in the EU?

Please provide a summary of your concept/ idea

The Environment’s departament of the City Council of A Coruña, understood it needed to provide the city with a unique and more accessible signage to all people. For this reason, they hired me as project and accessibility director and the company Novagarda S.L to carry out the layout design of the guide. Signage is essential in the orientation in the space. A correct application provides greater accessibility in public spaces. As an architect specialized in universal accessibility, I proposed a universal signaling system,accesible to all people, with or without disabilities. The concept of this guide is to create signage for the city's green spaces that will also serve as a model for its urban spaces. A signaling that can be understood by all people: the tourist offer increases, the activities ... the framework of the cities is becoming larger and more globalized. As an accessibility specialist, I know that there are some pictograms, words ... that can be understood differently depending on the culture, capacities, needs ... of people. So good sign signage, simple and understandable grammar, supporting and digital elements for understanding will make it easy for everyone to understand. If you understand and guide yourself, you will be integrated into the city. In this guide I outline the guidelines that all companies creating the new signage must follow: font, font size, distances to edges, colors and contrasts, pictograms to be used, arrows, materials, supporting digital elements, physical location, height, approach spaces,accessibility of elements, how it should be written so that everyone understands it: fereigners, people with reduced mobility, people with cognitive disabilities, sensory disabilities, the elederly, people from other cultures.... all people can understand the signage of all the green spaces of the city. Clarification: I have the permission of City Council A Coruña to present this project.Tt is already public.The language of document is galician

Please give information about the key objectives of your concept/idea in terms of sustainability and how these would be met

A sustainable development model is one that takes into account the three main aspects of well-being and progress: - Ecology and protection of the environment. - Economy and growth. - Society and development to make it more fair, advanced and inclusive. To begin with, it has been a project commissioned by the Environment for the city's green spaces, so ecology and environmental protection was important. In this sense, one of the objectives is to eliminate all the existing signage so far in the parks and beaches of the city. On many occasions, there are too many elements and that causes the loss of the biodiversity and the disorientation of people. Therefore, with the design of this signage, it was sought to reduce elements and make them understandable by all people. In addition, inexpensive materials have been sought and with a color that blends into the environment. It has been made clear that in the signage it is necessary to avoid its manufacture with plastics and, being so simple, avoid a greater generation of waste. This project follows the objectives of the EU 2030 agenda. Economy and growth: a construction method and materials have been sought to help lower costs in its creation. Currently, it is talking to companies that can carry out its preparation. Apart from this, for me, the most important thing is that by generating a signage design accessible to all people, and taking into account that A Coruña is a very touristy city in Spain, the opportunity is being given to people who even now they have been excluded, they can go to visit, understand, orient themselves, read ... in the green spaces of the city. More visitors means an improvement in the economy of the city. Finally, it has been made clear that it is a signage accessible to all people, seeking Universal Design criteria to make society more just, advanced and inclusive. That was the reason they hired me.

Please give information about the key objectives of your concept/idea in terms of aesthetics and quality of experience beyond functionality and how these would be met

In this project, in addition to creating accessible signage, an aesthetic criterion has been sought that is integrated into the environment, in green spaces, Perhaps that has been the most complicated. In the first place, we wanted the vertical supports to be elegant, aesthetic, but at the same time follow neuroarchitectural criteria so that they do not generate danger from crashes. Another factor was to use durable materials for the sustainability of the space. A simple design, similar to the Mies van der Rohe cross profiles, but accessible: with curved corners for safe use and for the material to last longer. Sufficient support widths are sought, but that are slender to give lightness in the space: the important thing is to see the green landscape, but detecting the signs to orient oneself. On this vertical structure, hang one or more arms. They have harmonious and accessible proportions. The excess of elements is avoided to make it more cognitively accessible and, of course, to maintain that image of lightness and dialogue with nature. Natural beauty. I looked for an aesthetic in which the elements that made up the sign visually contrast to be detected by all people (dark background on light letter), but at the same time, aesthetically integrate into green spaces. There are several models of signage  in this guide of signage products and, all of them, follow the same aesthetic criteria.

Please give information about the key objectives of your concept/idea in terms of inclusion and how these would be been met

The signage is part of the public space and, therefore, must be built to guarantee sustainability but also functionality: it can be used and enjoyed by all people. With this guide, which establishes how the signages should be aesthetically and where it should be placed in the green spaces of the city, we guarantee access to information on human diversity. In short, the organization of the public space must promote the plurality of citizenship, without marginalizing it. That implies an inclusive and accessible design. When the city council hired me to do this project, we made it clear that "making a city" meant creating urban spaces that promote equal opportunity for use it and the interaction of all people, without discrimination. Increase your quality of life. And this was done from something as simple as a signaling element. To create the different signage products, I relied on six aspects in their design: 1. Cognitive accesibility: which words to choose, sentence structure, easy reading, symbols and arrows, pictograms ... 2.  Visual accesibility: visual perception, accessible typography, pictograms ... 3. Haptic accesibility: high relief in symbols and typography, use of braille, use of raised planes, signage on the pavement up to the signs ... 4. Auditory accesibility: acoustic signaling, QR codes in different languages ​​... 5. Physical accesibility: accessible routes, location of the elements to be able to approach, dimensions of the horizontal and vertical elements ... 6. Good maintenance and care of materials and products to improve organic accessibility: there are people with hypersensitivity to products, to light ... that is why this was also very important to take into account in our design. In short, lay the foundations to create a new product, accessible to all.

Please explain the innovative character of your concept/ idea

I think the idea in this guide designing different types of accessible signage is different than what exists so far. I think it reaches a level of accessibility that has not yet been seen. I have to say that I am part of a working group of the UNE standards, I have worked on regulations of my country and my region to improve the accessibility of the environments ... but I never had the opportunity to, through a product, put all that knowledge together and go further. Nowadays, the design does not contemplate accessibility for all people (maybe only for people with reduced mobility or blind people). With these criteria (of this guide), with this design, I have sought the inclusion of all people: people with chronic diseases, people who do not understand the signs because their exclusively aesthetic design makes them unable to understand arrows, pictograms ... I wanted that all the informative texts of the signs can be read by people with low vision (through QR codes the high signs) and through braille or text with relief in the low texts. Also, it is something new in that it also thinks about the accessibility of the environment, with sustainable materials, with colors that can be detected by people but that do not harm the landscape or animal biodiversity ... Finally: the novelty is I create a signage, a product, that incorporates criteria that do not yet exist, not even in the UNE or ISO standards.

Please detail the plans you have for the further development, promotion and/or implementation of your concept/idea, with a particular attention to the initiatives to be taken before May 2022

This guide, which creates the types of signs that should be put in green spaces, is the first step to make it a reality: - Right now, they are producing the first signs of my designs.  - This summer, this signaling will begin to be placed on the city's beaches as it is the priority. - As the months progress, the signs of the main parks of the city will be removed to incorporate the new signage under my supervision. And then, to all the green spaces. Later, I do not know if before or after May 2022, I will try to convince to establish this signage with these criteria throughout the city. I hope it.  - Another of my objectives, before May 2022, is to contact other cities in Galicia or Spain, so that they change the signage that exists in the city, for mine, more accessible. That if, with some changes that correspond to the corporate image of the city council.

By ticking this box, you declare that all the information provided in this form is factually correct, that the proposed concept/idea has not been proposed for the New European Bauhaus Rising Stars Awards more than once in the same category.