From Classroom to Smart City Vanguard:
The Story of the Smart Water Fountain
By Piotrek Pérez.
A universally accessible drinking fountain featuring ergonomic design and holographic technology aimed at redefining how citizens interact with smart cities. Every year on March 22, the world marks World Water Day—an observance established by the United Nations in 1993 to highlight the value of Earth's most precious natural resource and its precarious state. It represents a critical battle that modern society simply cannot afford to lose. In this context, industrial design and technological innovation have emerged as crucial tools for developing viable solutions to counter unsustainable lifestyles. It was precisely within this framework—and the drive to build tangible solutions for tomorrow's Smart Cities—that designer Piotrek Pérez developed the Smart Water Fountain.
The Origin: From University Brief to Academic Excellence
The idea originated during Pérez’s second year at the School of Design Engineering (ETSID) at the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV). The initial assignment focused on meeting rigorous ergonomic and universal accessibility standards governed by Spanish UNE regulations.Piotrek Pérez later revisited, expanded, and refined the concept for his Final Degree Project under the supervision of Dr. César Iribarren. The resulting work earned an outstanding score of 9.7 out of 10, establishing it as a mature, technically robust, and visionary proposal.
Innovation for the Modern Smart City
What sets the Smart Water Fountain apart is its departure from traditional public fixtures. Rather than a conventional drinking fountain, the project introduces a new paradigm for urban infrastructure. Built around universal accessibility for all users, it incorporates accessible holographic information interfaces.
Through this intuitive system, the fountain simplifies and personalizes civic services while advancing three vital pillars of modern urban planning:
Sustainability: Encouraging public water consumption and curbing single-use plastics.
Environmental Quality: Seamlessly integrating into the urban ecosystem.
Economic Efficiency: Optimizing municipal resources in civic services and urban mobility.
Ahead of Its Time: Pitching at Smart City Expo World Congress
In 2017, Pérez took the project to the prestigious Smart City Expo World Congress with the goal of securing investors and bringing the concept to urban spaces worldwide. However, the search for funding proved unsuccessful—not for lack of ingenuity, but because the market was not yet ready. Integrating holographic interaction and smart data hubs into public water infrastructure was simply a vision ahead of its time.
Recognition by Experimenta Magazine
Despite being ahead of the market curve, the industry took notice of its visionary scope. In 2017, the renowned design journal Experimenta featured the innovation in an article highlighting groundbreaking water-inspired designs.
As the magazine noted:
"A drinking water fountain with universal accessibility for Smart Cities, which also simplifies and personalizes services for citizens through appropriate access to holographic information, is what Piotrek Pérez proposes with his Smart Water Fountain."
Two years later, in March 2019, Experimenta showcased the project once again in its feature "10 Projects to Consider on World Water Day," reaffirming that good design is far more than aesthetics—it is a vital answer to pressing global challenges.
Novo, L. (March 22, 2019). 10 projects to consider on World Water Day. Experimenta Magazine. Retrieved from [source]
© Copyright 2015 Piotrek Pérez Http://www.piotrekperez.com
