Call Box - Urban Traces/EXIST

The call box continues the series of non-conventional spaces of Urban Traces, the phone becoming an exponent of the urban society. It is a part of our every day life helping us to make connections and keep in touch with everyone. In every apartment there is a stable phone and every individual has one or two mobiles, in every boulevard or street you can find a call box.The phone means movement and expresses the identity of individual who talks on it. The stable phone used to be a communication means for the older generation. The offers of the mobile phone companies made it very accessible to the new generations. The phone became more than a means of communication, but almost a way of living. Its brand, color, the gesture with which one answers the mobile or the call bell sound shows the identity of the individual who possesses it.On the other hand the call box is forgotten. It has become a lost social place. It is physically assaulted by the urban society, for the windows of the call box are usually broken. People pass indifferently by it: no one sees it, no one asks any questions about it, being sometimes used as a shelter against rain.Nobody wanders if this box would not be ignored, then the place in itself would be better and some normal urban gestures would be restored. The project “Exist” re-uses a small space forgotten in order to remind the public the common values of communication in a normal society.We bring into discussion the urban identity through the call box. In this way the individual is invited to participate, to look for a position, an attitude so that he may launch a social gesture. UT project was set as an objective practical test of such approaches capable of producing urban spaces that got deteriorated or had not been used enough.