Livensa Living is one of the leading owners and operators for student residences and flexible accommodations in Spain and Portugal. Its new buildings are designed to include large works of urban art, contributing to add cultural value to the urban landscape of the neighborhoods and cities where they are located. However, the company has not only remodeled or reconverted them, but also tried to incorporate artistic interventions of different kinds.
Since its beginnings, Livensa Living has sought to differentiate itself architecturally, culturally and throughout artistic level, both with color and creativity in its buildings, giving voice and space to great urban artists of the national and international scene. FYI, you will be able to see the buildings both in Spain and Portugal.
Livensa Living’s urban art projects have therefore opted for architecture, design and urban art with a clear objective. That’s to say transmitting, through art, values, feelings, themes, or up-to-date issues, both to its residents, and the neighborhood’s surroundings. Whether you are just passing through, for leisure, tourism or business, make sure to photograph them.
All this without forgetting the connection with the neighborhoods and cities in which they are present. Therefore, the selection of artists and works is by no means random.
What are the artsy projects curated by Livensa Living around Spain and Portugal?
Similarly to what happens with the rest of European capital cities, the Spanish and Portuguese territories count with unnumerous great artists. These young adults decorate the urban landscape of both rural and urban areas with colorful decorations. Let us talk to you about the projects that Livensa Living has curated in the Iberian Peninsula.
Please note that not all the buildings owned by Livensa Living are included in these article. However, here it’s a list of them:
- Livensa Living Studios Madrid Alcobendas
- Livensa Living:
- Madrid Getafe
- Sevilla
- Granada Fuentenueva
- Barcelona Diagonal Alto
- Lisboa Cidade Universitária
- Coimbra Rio
- Lisboa Marquês de Pombal
- Porto Boavista
- Porto Campus
Might Granada be the best uni town in Spain?
Marina Capdevila was the artist who painted last 2022 this large-format mural – 242m2-, as well as other interior interventions in the student residence of Livensa Living Granada Fuentenueva.
Her proposal for the façade’s mural at Livensa Living Granada’s new residence is fresh, irreverent and playful. Moreover, the artist based the artwork in a Spanish language popular saying: “wisdom comes with age” and wanted to subvert its meaning.
Following her style and creative process, the artist opted for an elder lady who does not follow the classic and archetypal image of an old woman, but rather reverses and transforms it. The mural depicts an older woman presiding over the façade, with a modern and carefree appearance and character, wearing sunglasses, chains, small tattoos, acrylic nails and is eating candy, making reference to the students and the young people who live in the building.
The lady is represented with an open minded attitude, but also related to the birds flying out of his head, which are, in turn, a nod to the neighborhood in which the residence is located. The area is called Los Pajaritos. At the same time, the birds are also a metaphor and an encouraging message for the young students to let their imagination fly and make their creative ideas come true.
Creative elements in Alcobendas, Comunidad de Madrid
With a particular colorful style, Uriginal chose to create a contemporary fusion of Athena, goddess of war and civilization, with Minerva, goddess of wisdom and arts. Athena & Minerva, which is the title of this mural – larger than 130 square meters-, represents a young woman in the purest Greek style.
The mural itself is a metaphor of Livensa Living’s spirit, a mediating space, the midpoint and balance between calm and wavy, and between comprehending and implementing. In the artist’s words, it is “an allegory of strength and wisdom, represented by a woman” who, with her empowered gaze, gives off the strength that challenges all who observe her. She is accompanied by two animals: an owl and a wolf. The former represents philosophy, observation and solitude, while the latter symbolizes physical resistance, communication and group orientation.
Inside the building, there is a second mural also painted by Uriginal. It is a continuation of the previous one, which introduces us into a dialogue between the characters and the artist’s own cosmology. Doesn’t it sound interesting?
Barcelona, a very multicultural city
PichiAvo is a creative duo from Valencia, who painted Livensa Living Diagonal Alto project, focusing on transmitting a series of symbols, values and concepts essential to our society and to the students living in the residence. Their concept goes around Urban Mythology style, which consists of mixing classic art and and contemporary urban art, through graffiti.
The whole art project was divided into two stages and developed on 3 different areas: the building’s façade with a 25m high mural, the rooftop and the residence’s interior lounge. The first one was carried out in June 2019. It showcased Athena, Greek goddess symbolized as a warrior, fighter, wise and independent woman. A protector for people and territory.
It’s thanks to Atenea, that PichiAvo launches a message in favor of women’s empowerment, enhancing her as a protective figure for the students who live in the residence. Later, it was in October of that same year, that the second phase began. The artists painted on the rooftop over the overlooking sea view. It was there where the artists depicted the Greek god of the seas, Poseidon, seen from different angles. This figure helps to highlight Athena, since, according to mythology, both gods fought for the city of Athens and finally Athena, thanks to her intelligence, defeated Poseidon, and was proclaimed the cities’ guardian figure.
A unique student residence designed by Livensa Living in Lisbon, Portugal
This artwork, located in R. Sousa Lopes 51, represents Livensa Living at its best. The student residence’s exterior design in Cidade Universitaria was carried out by Atelier Contencioso and consists of an organic stain formed by 105 aluminum sheets. You gotta look at it in an upward direction, to observe the distribution in a harmonious way, the shapes of the leaves and a Ginkgo biloba tree petals (Damasco Prateado, in Portuguese).
The sheets were laser-cut by the four artists, and each one is worked in a specific way, with different dimensions and styles. The artwork also counts with eight neon lights that create a silhouette over certain leaves that emerge as illumination points, mapping the “tree” and the nighttime path back to the residence. In other words, a lantern for the students. The intervention has a three-dimensional reading characteristic. It’s due to the distance between the sheets on the wall, that each set, created at the same time by each artist, has a different distance measurement.
The Ginkgo biloba’s representation is not a coincidence: it’s a tree that counts with Chinese roots, deciduous and it could reach heights of 20, 35, or even 50 meters. It is considered a living fossil due to its longevity, existing since the age of dinosaurs. It is a tree that, from generation to generation, has observed time passing by, the Portuguese history and the metamorphosis of the world. It is symbolically associated with peace and perseverance because it survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima during the World War II. Its leaves are used in cosmetics against free radicals, as a remedy for brain oxygenation, and has nootropic properties, being used mainly as a memory and attention intensifier.
These secular trees also have the peculiarity of having male and female flowers. The shades of their leaves, green, yellow, red and ash, are shades associated with the Earth’s fertility, youth, strength, life, warmth, nature, joy and hope.
Who are some of the artists in charge of Livensa Living Studios art designs?
Once a company decides tu run a street art related action, there are many things to take into consideration. That’s to say, paint costs, electric elevators rental, or artists’ fees, among others. However, what Livensa Living promoted was the interest of the artists in taking the lead on these actions. Their involvement was a plus, and all of them enjoyed the experience.
Who will be the next ones in the list? We’d love to see what fresh news brings us the 2024.
Axel Void
He was born in Miami in 1986, and raised by a Haitian mother and Spanish father. However, Axel grew up in Spain from the age of three, where he was strongly influenced by classical painting and drawing. It’s there where he has been in contact with the graffiti community since 1999. Related to his professional background, Void studied Fine Arts in Cadiz, Granada and Seville, and settled in Berlin until he moved to Miami back in 2013, where he currently lives.
Axel is a multimedia artist driven by a passionate interest in the art of storytelling. Inspired by truth in all its forms, Axel’s compositions are presented with an almost journalistic intrigue. He loves to be presented by the focus he puts on people as part of a global community, where he explores the structures of the global community, its cultural and social structures that regulate our habits and interactions.
His murals can be photographed in countries such as Germany, Italy, Poland, India, Mexico, Norway, the United States, Cuba, Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic. In addition, it is in the UK where he participated in 2015 as a guest artist in ‘Dismaland’, Banksy’s most ambitious project to date. Ever heard of it?
PichiAvo
It is an artistic duo created by Juan Antonio Sánchez Santos (Pichi) and Álvaro Hernández Santa Eulalia (Avo), recognized worldwide for their ability to create relationships between art, architecture, sculpture, space and social contexts, through a transgressive and modernist artistic language.
The partnership, which has been acting as a single figure since 2007, has developed a unique conceptual style that ranked them among the big names in international Street Art. In addition to being the main influencers from the 2019 Valencia’s Fallas edition. Besides that, they count with an extensive artistic career at a national level. PichiAvo has also carried out international urban art projects in Miami, New York or Moscow, among other cities.
They first debuted in Barcelona thanks to Livensa Living. It was in 2022 when they painted a wall located in Carrer de Sant Mateu, 9, Esplugues de Llobregat. Its largest façade became a street canvas where to capture all their poetic and conceptual strength.
Atelier Contencioso
It represents the name of the workshop and meetup point of three artists, Ana Velez, Joana Gomez and Maria Sassei. Founded in February 2015, also with Xana Sousa, it is currently located in Hangar [Lisbon] and it was born from the common need to find a place to work together, bring new ideas to the table and establish complicities and parallelisms in pictorial production.
The works that have been developed, both in individual approach and through collective exhibition, are based on a site-specific thinking, taking into consideration the place with its specificities, presenting itself as a challenge for the artists. Overall, it is an added value for the place that hosts them.
What’s Cooltourspain opinion about the job developed by Livensa Living in terms of art?
We love what we see. It’s clear that there is a positive impact in the areas where the street art is decorated on walls. Still we would love that the city councils from each given building, would have legal walls where adults and teenagers may paint without the necessity of hiding from police.
As a matter of fact, our street art tours talk about the artists that Livensa Living has hired for their paintings.
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