“CECI N'EST PAS UNE BURKA” @ First International Design Congress I PORTUGAL 2003

URBAN WARRIORS | Maximum Security Commissariat Miguel Rios

was searching for proposals that look forward to find solutions for city problems. They called for works that could be operative, in which the functional components could help citizens to live better the pollution strain, the urban rhythm, the isolation dangers and the aggressions to their own security.

We’ve conceived a unisex piece of clothing made to all citizens that should…

… mirror the dubious character of their feelings, allowing them to be faithful to themselves *… be simple, iconic, subjective and universal 

… give autonomy, power of decision and civic responsibility 

… work as a shout for life in the loneliness of anonymity 

… allow visibility  and security in moments of eminent danger

… confer a sense of freedom and individual responsibility as an essential right on the search for truth and for the vitality that stems from the society as a whole

… allows them not to feel constrained and obliged to ear the city noise, enabling them to be peacefully with their thoughts

… lets the user be invisible and truly anonymous, becoming precisely the image of what the city makes of them:  a pedestrian

… offers a space for privacy and introspection - a home-cocoon. 

Only in this context will be possible to avoid the supremacy of who, in the dark, gets power over the citizen’s silence and passiveness. The piece of clothing is a waterproof dark blue coat with a hood and it has a zip’s system allowing its transformation into a jump suit. 

The hood can be closed with elastic strings and it’s provided with an “ears protecting system” that can be withdrew or stretched, depending on the user’s will to ear or not the sounds of the city. 

We have created in this peace of clothing a lightning system that draws the human silhouette – operational by the users’ action. It is based on the urban signs’ language: on the front side, the light is white; on the back it is red.

The intention is to turn this language the most universal possible, reinforcing the citizens’ physical and human dimension.

Ilustrations by André Ruivo

Inside the suit it is printed a deliberately juxtaposed sequence of images that propose the user ways of fruition of his “burka”. It is a comic sequence, or diagram, that uses simple icons to ease identification and inform immediately. 

The suit has two positions: when the clothing has no light it reinforces the citizen’s estate of isolation, letting him truly anonymous; the second, when the clothing is enlightened, corresponds to an estate of alert, marking out and detaching him from whatever vehicles.