Llum BCN 2026
- Friday, February 06, 2026 - Sunday, February 08, 2026
- 19:00 — 23:30
- Llum2026, Plaça Castella, 4, Poblenou
- $ free
IAAC | Fab Lab Barcelona presents UNDERLIGHT at Llum Barcelona 2026 | Light Arts Festival
IAAC | Fab Lab Barcelona unveils UNDERLIGHT, a public installation that reveals the hidden infrastructures powering the city, as part of the fifteenth edition of Llum Barcelona. Moving beyond light as spectacle, the project invites the public to explore the underground systems that sustain urban life, transforming a small plaza in Poblenou into a site of civic engagement and reflection on energy, labour, and maintenance. The installation will be visible from 6 to 8 February 2026 at Castella, 4 (Plaça), Poblenou, Barcelona.
Developed within the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) and its Master in Design for Emergent Futures, run jointly with ELISAVA, the project is curated by Mario Santamaría in collaboration with Saúl Baeza, Chiara Dall’Olio and Guillem Camprodon, and designed and produced by IAAC second-year master students.
The installation occupies a small public plot in Poblenou, a site shaped by decades of neighbourhood activism and once home to an electrical transformer station. Open yet unresolved, the space becomes the starting point for UNDERLIGHT, which frames infrastructure not as a neutral technical system but as a cultural and political layer of urban life.
Within a festival dedicated to light as both medium and metaphor, the square is transformed into a fictional roadworks site. Barriers, signage, and screens stage a simulated inspection of underground systems, including what appears to be a live feed from a small robot navigating pipes below the plaza. This deliberate ambiguity exposes the hidden, often invisible networks that sustain the city while inviting visitors to act as temporary maintenance workers. Observation becomes participation, highlighting the labour and care that keep urban systems running.
The project resonates with curator Mario Santamaría’s practice, which makes abstract networks tangible through projects like Internet Tour. Developed collectively with Fab Lab Barcelona, UNDERLIGHT reflects a pedagogical approach that treats the city as a site of inquiry. Rather than offering a finished solution, it opens a space for reflection on energy, labour, and maintenance as public matters, reframing the illuminated city not as a seamless surface, but as a layered, contested terrain shaped as much by what lies below ground as by what is visible above.
About the Master in Design for Emergent Futures
Organised by IAAC and ELISAVA, in collaboration with Fab Lab Barcelona and Fab Academy, the Master in Design for Emergent Futures integrates theory and practice in a multidisciplinary, hands-on approach. Built on four pillars: Explore, Build, Reflect, and Apply, the programme equips students to tackle complex systemic challenges and develop adaptable skills for uncertain futures. More info here.
About Llum BCN 2026
Llum BCN, the festival of light arts, returns from 6 to 8 February 2026, celebrating its fifteenth edition. Organized by the Institut de Cultura de Barcelona, the artistic direction is led by lighting designer Maria Güell i Ordis, with the collaboration of Austrian curator Birgit Lill-Schnabl. With the theme “Night Landscapes”, the festival will offer a different, night-time experience of architecture, stripping it of its functionality and embracing experimentation to explore the full potential of buildings, streets and squares.