Architecture and Engineering students from La Salle-URL have once again taken part in Llum BCN, the light arts festival that transforms Barcelona’s Poblenou district every year. This year’s edition, held within the framework of Barcelona 2026 World Capital of Architecture, has incorporated light installations at different points across the city, with the campus taking part in line with its involvement in the capitality programme and its commitment to Barcelona and its architecture.
The students’ work, entitled @username, draws inspiration from American artist Mark Jenkins and presents a series of translucent anthropomorphic sculptures created using adhesive tape and illuminated from within. The figures, based on the artists’ own bodies, evoke human fragility within a system of surveillance and digital dependency. Each sculpture incorporates controlled LEDs that generate luminous sequences of connection and disconnection, a process that places the viewer within the same circle of technological control. Through everyday and intimate scenes interrupted by mobile phones, the work reflects on how social media reshape human relationships.
The project was designed by students from the Bachelor in Architecture Studies: Arnau Llucià, Anna Vadilo, Anna Cardoso, Pol Canales, Constanza Contreras, Nerea Mejías, José Salvador, Antoni Zuromski, Anna Barragan, Àlex Cortés, Arnau Saló, Rafael Alonso, Marc Pons and Francisco Santiago García; and from the Bachelor in Design and Creation of Interactive Products: Dakota Gázquez, Marta Gras, Marcela Elfarkh, Xué Fujing Cendrós, Aleix Bonet, Marc Català, Pau Vera, David Morera, Josep Medina, Victor Font and Ferran Nerín. In addition, a group of students, accompanied by Sergi Arbusà, professor at the School of Architecture, attended the Young Talent Awards ceremony held at the Disseny Hub Barcelona, where awards were presented to the best installations created by the city’s schools and faculties.
Professors from the School of Architecture in the professional installations circuit
The professional installations circuit of Llum BCN included POSTMACHINA, a work created by Clàudia Raurell, architect and professor at the La Salle-URL Higher Technical School of Architecture (ETSALS). In POSTMACHINA, the mechanical order of the factory is reinterpreted as an immaterial structure of light and pulsation. The space responds, is rewritten and reactivated with each movement, forming a fabric in which industrial memory, light and human gesture converge in a shared cadence. A graduate of ETSALS, she co-founded the studio CRÜ and was part of it until 2022, and she currently combines professional practice with teaching. She has received national and international recognition and appears on the Forbes list of the 50 most influential Spanish architects of 2025.
Llum BCN celebrates Barcelona 2026
This year, the fifteenth edition of Llum BCN coincided with Barcelona’s designation as World Capital of Architecture by UNESCO-UIA. With a programme designed to highlight the city’s unique architecture through works created for emblematic buildings, Llum BCN incorporated ten light installations combined with dance across ten districts of Barcelona to celebrate and welcome the capitality.
Xavi Bové, Director of the Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree in Digital Arts, took part in the programme through his studio, Xavi Bové Studio. The work, entitled Equilibri de l’atzar, explored movement between unpredictability and harmony. Through undulating forms that flow like currents, the piece reveals how chaos can be transformed into dynamic order. It is a visual exploration showing that, even within randomness, there is an equilibrium that invites contemplation. Alumni of La Salle-URL with an extensive career in digital art and artistic creation, Xavi Bové’s work sits at the intersection of art and technology, exploring concepts such as time, memory, human perception and the relationship between individuals and their environment.
