We launch ‘Barcode Collection’, Escofet and MVRDV’s new modular urban furniture collection 

From Escofet, our urban landscape business, we are launching ‘Barcode Collection’, a new urban furniture collection designed together with architecture practice MVRDV. The collection was presented in Barcelona as part of Molins Talks, a series of conversations exploring the challenges that will shape the evolution of our cities, organised as part of our collaboration with Barcelona World Capital of Architecture 2026. 

The collection is built around three core elements —TRIBUNE, DUNE and DESK— that can be combined, repeated and rotated to create a wide range of configurations in public space, from long linear arrangements to smaller islands integrated into the urban landscape. 

With BARCODE, we bring modularity into public space design. A single family of elements can generate different configurations while maintaining a shared identity. Rather than a set of standalone products, we have conceived the collection as an open system that can adapt to different contexts and bring together furniture, planting, circulation and areas for people to gather and spend time within a single composition. 

The proposal expands the role of urban furniture as a design tool, making it part of the wider process of shaping the contemporary urban landscape. 

Three elements, multiple configurations 

TRIBUNE introduces a stepped configuration made up of a broad sequence of steps that invites people to sit, climb and take in their surroundings. It also incorporates a configurable tree pit that can be positioned on either side of the module to respond to the specific conditions of each project. 

DUNE features a fluid, sculptural geometry and a gently sloping surface that creates a seamless transition between seating, reclining and landscape, allowing for different ways of interacting with and using the space. 

DESK combines a seat and table within a single monolithic architectural volume, extending its possible uses to eating, working, talking and meeting. 

The three elements can be combined to adapt the system to different scales, uses and site conditions. A variety of elements, configurations and concrete finishes also makes it possible to create compositions with very different identities while retaining a common design language. 

Designing public space around people 

For Daniel Milà, Managing Director of Escofet, the collaboration with MVRDV highlights the potential of design to transform public space and create new opportunities for people to meet and interact: 

“With ‘Barcode Collection’, we have developed a modular and flexible system that gives architects and landscape designers multiple ways to configure a space while maintaining a shared identity. The collection reflects our commitment to developing solutions that bring together innovation, functionality and design to serve people and cities.” 

Our relationship with MVRDV goes back to 1998, when Jacob van Rijs, Founding Partner of MVRDV, first came across Escofet while doing an architecture internship in Barcelona. Even then, he was impressed by the breadth of our collection and our collaborations with architects whose work he admired. “It is exciting, and an honour, to now be part of that story,” he says. 

For Van Rijs, BARCODE also proposes a different way of approaching the design of urban spaces. Rather than selecting benches and other catalogue elements and placing them in predictable locations, the collection creates a creative interplay between the individual elements, the composition developed by the urban designer and the unexpected ways in which people may use them. 

With ‘Barcode Collection’, public space becomes, in Van Rijs’ words, “the living room of the city.”