From April 25 to May 1, 2024, Logroño hosts the tenth edition of Concéntrico, a celebration of urban innovation and transformation. This year, the festival explores the future of cities, incorporating new formats, engaging diverse audiences, and tackling urban challenges through the lens of time as a catalyst for change in design. Featuring 20 interventions and activities involving over 100 professionals from 17 countries, the program encompasses processes such as renaturalizing public spaces, reimagining urban structures, and integrating recycled materials from previous editions.
Additionally, collaborations with educational centers ensure a lasting impact beyond the festival, fostering new collective practices in public spaces. Special projects such as "The street in 10 years" or initiatives involving students and pupils from local schools and educational centers further enrich the festival's engagement with communities across Spain.
Read on to discover the full list of urban interventions at the upcoming architecture and design festival Concéntrico 10.
Related Article
12 Architecture Events to Pay Attention to in 2024The street in 10 years: Scenius 26003 / Daryan Knoblauch
Location: Glorieta del doctor Zubía
To celebrate its 10th anniversary, Concéntrico launches a new provocation in the shape of a competition to answer the question: "How could a street evolve with a ten-year strategy?". This new program, developed in collaboration with Porto Academy, appears contradictory, asking for temporary interventions to consider a long-span evolution. Winner Daryan Knoblauch proposes a methodology for listening and allowing the people of Logroño to influence this evolution, an open-ended process that aims to offer a platform for conversation and an iterative approach rather than a top-down predefined solution. The strategy is called Scenius 26003, a tribute to Brian Eno's concept for the collective intelligence and creativity of a group of people, rather than that of just one individual.
For its first intervention, Knoblauch offers a "Megaphone," a minimal temporary installation that appears in the public space as an alien structure to provoke reactions and ignite conversations. It also offers a platform for meetings, conferences, workshops, and performance art, facilitating community participation in urban design. The structure will reappear in various shapes, informed by previous reactions, until 2034 as a symbol of communication and exchange.
Poplar Assembly / Javier García
Location: Plaza de la Diversidad
One of the three winners of the competition for urban interventions in Logrono, Javier García proposes a pavilion that redefines the urban space it occupies, serving as a unified space for festival-related activities and an intuitive gathering space. With a perimeter marked by a configuration of slender poplars, the intervention is created as an urban oasis, with its margins meandering in between the existing buildings and structures.
Dancing carwash / Agence Spatiale
Location: Pasaje de la Chimenea
Dancing Carwash reimagines architecture as a dance partner, inviting engagement in its enigmatic choreography. Inspired by traditional Spanish dances such as the stilts of Anguiano or the Riojan jota, it aims to evoke the joy of movement and celebration. Using the imagery of inflating dresses and unfurling fabrics, this playful intervention transforms the Chimenea passage by taking local customs and traditions and infusing them into the urban space, inviting interaction and playful discovery.
Make it rain / Quentin Gérard + Guillaume Deman + Elisabeth Terrisse de Botton + Matthieu Brasebin
Location: Patio del Museo de La Rioja
Contemplating the theme of urban heat, water infrastructures, and the use of natural resources, the Belgian team proposes an installation that uses the thermal properties of water-soaked bricks to create a cool and inviting space, ready to welcome interactions and gatherings. Water from the Ebro Rover has been brought to this courtyard, which is now paved with bricks. While gathering under the textile canopy, people can collect the water and spray it onto the bricks to lower the ambient temperature, in a modern reinterpretation of vernacular cooling systems.
Public Monument / Willem de Haan
Location: Monumento a Espartero
In an attempt to relate to an otherwise inaccessible monument, Dutch artist Willem de Haan proposes a playful reinterpretation of the statue’s pedestal. This honorary pedestal thus becomes a modest dwelling, overlapping the image of historical solemnity with the realities of everyday life. It also invites closer interactions, as a small deck allows people to walk over the fountain and get closer to this modified monument, merging the two images even more. The temporary intervention challenges the honorary character of statues in public spaces, prompting reflection on the role and aesthetics of these elements in urban life.
Open Segments / SYN architects
Location: Patio COAR
The Najd region's traditional courtyard houses are the source of inspiration for the pavilion's design, emphasizing privacy and small-scale interactions, thus offering a soft introduction to the Arab spatial culture. Constructed from wooden planks and natural burlap material, it creates softly lit spaces, well-connected to their environment. The pavilion strives to reflect the collective memory, showcasing spatial narratives and societal changes. It symbolizes both fragmentation and continuity in Najd's architectural and social fabric. After the festival, the modular pavilion will be reassembled in Saudi Arabia in a manner that reflects the Spanish influence, allowing for larger gathering spaces to emphasize this intercultural exchange.
Off-Season Pavilion / KOSMOS
Location: Plaza Santiago
"Off-Season Pavilion" offers an eco-conscious alternative to transient festival architecture by repurposing locally available resources in Logroño. The installation uses "jaulones de vino," large metal cages used for wine storage during the wine-production season. During the Concentrico Festival, however, these crates are typically left unused by local producers, thus becoming an available resource for architectural experimentation, before returning them to their original purpose. KOSMOS proposes a temporary structure in the shape of an open basilica, taking advantage of the intricate play of light and shadow created by the crates' golden mesh. By returning the material after the closing of the festival, the pavilion becomes zero-waste, favoring circular design principles while exploring the beauty and potential of everyday infrastructures.
¡Saca las sillas! / ESD Madrid
Location: Biblioteca de La Rioja
The Library's courtyard becomes an interactive space through this installation, which offers a plywood lattice from which pieces can be taken out and assembled into seats and tables. This enables visitors to take ownership of the space and exercise their creativity, fashioning their urban furniture and changing the configuration of the courtyard. Designed by Lucía Navas and Daniel Rodríguez, with guidance from tutors Pilar Acón, Sergio Arias, and Marina Fernández, the project aims to ignite playful engagement with the environment.
The Wall / MUOTO + Georgi Stanishev
Location: Plaza del Revellín
The installation is located at a historical junction in the city, where the famous pilgrim path of Camino de Santiago intersects the ancient defensive wall that used to surround the city. A small plaza marks the area. The intervention aims to close off the plaza to create an urban alcove to provide temporary rest for travelers. Constructed from cinder blocks and wooden pallets, it poses the question: how do we erect a temporary wall? Inspired by industrial storage, the layered design underscores its impermanence while ensuring stability. Positioned theatrically, it transforms the urban landscape into a stage for contemplation.
Cuaderno de surcos / ji arquitectos + Blas Antón
Location: Viña Lanciano
The project aims to craft a "Visual Landscape" along the natural contours of vineyard furrows, offering a reinterpretation of the landscape's relationship with the city. This concept invites customization of the environment using industrial artifacts. Through Mini-Citizen Participation, Logroño's children contribute drawings of natural elements, which are then transformed into wooden installations scattered across the vineyards.
Razzle Dazzle / Sara Ricciardi Studio
Location: Plaza del Mercado
Covered in the distinctive camouflage aesthetics of Razzle Dazzle, the installation is envisioned as a ship pointing its bow at the Cathedral. Inspired by tactics used to confuse the opponent, the vibrant installation in the square prompts dynamism, urging citizens to be flexible in perception, action, and thought. The trampoline in the middle allows for active movement and changing perspectives of the square and cathedral, while the visually stimulating intervention prompts curiosity and exploration. In a nod to activist interventions, the playful yet purposeful stage will be activated through parkour performances, advocating for movement and openness.
Fuente / Corvin Cristian
Location: Calle Portales
The playful installation uses a busy urban corner to place a circular fountain with mobile octopus-like tentacles equipped with concave mirrors. The movement of the mirrors, combined with the effects of running and splashing water, reflects the active and engaging urban environment. The compact nature of the installation also means that it can be easily adapted to fit into a permanent location, challenging the temporary nature of these types of installations.
La Citerne-Lit / Fred Sancère + Encore Heureux architects
Location: Plaza de San Bartolomé
The Citerne-Lit project embodies a "camouflage" concept, utilizing agricultural imagery to create a new outdoor feeling in his urban environment. Drawing inspiration from both farming culture and space capsules, it offers a cocoon-like program within an artful object. Despite its appearance of being patched together, the interior boasts a comfortable bed and a cozy nest-like atmosphere, providing a contrast to its rugged exterior.
Basic Forms / RaivioBumann
Location: Plaza Biblioteca Rafael Azcona
This interactive installation challenges urban design norms by embracing disorder and spontaneity. Comprising colorful plywood furniture of varying shapes, it encourages engagement and rearrangement, fostering creativity and playfulness. The intuitive design invites spontaneous actions, resulting in unplanned shapes and arrangements. Unlike the rigid structure of urban environments, this installation comes to life through human activation, dynamically adapting and eliciting diverse reactions.
Palo de Mayo / JBVA + Eugenio Nuzzo + Anatole Poirier + Alex Roux
Location: Concha del Espolón
The project addresses the absence of a tree in Parc del Espolón, turning it into an opportunity to create a new focal point that concentrates elements of its surroundings. In its place, a Palo de Mayo emerges as a point of convergence, inviting celebration and exchange and integrating various urban elements into a cohesive urban fragment.
Mikado Flowers / Malte Martin
Location: Parque Felipe VI
The installation proposes a poetic reading of urban spaces, introducing a plastic intervention envisioned as a landscape structure that passers-by can walk through and interact with. The landscape culture is a hybrid object, blending aspects of mikado, tipi, and floral universes to create an interactive space for playing, seeking refuge from the sun, or finding a moment of tranquility.
Public Utilities / Outpost Office
Location: Plaza 1º Mayo + Centros educativos
Plaza Primero de Mayo hosts a large-scale drawing inspired by human movement, reminiscent of urban construction markings. The proposal is extended to two educational centers. Comprising broken colored lines, the drawing offers various paths and possibilities for visitors to engage with. The lines are drawn in biodegradable ink by specially-trained robots, an automatic yet publicly informed process. These paths, drawn with the input of students, serve as tools to redefine playground usage in local educational centers. By encouraging students to think about their environment, the strategy prompts them to design games, connect spaces, and express significance through play.
What comes through the wall / Traffic Design
Location: Plaza Alonso de Salazar
This project reimagines public space objects as remnants, repurposing them for new functions. Utilizing the old wall, the sole remnant of a vanished structure, it employs light to create a graphic pattern. A perforated wall is placed over the existing one, with light and shadow replicating the decorative element around it, transforming it into dynamic features within the urban landscape.
Noventa y nueve / Esdir
Location: Esdir
The students of Esdir have created a structure spired by a seven-pointed star, linked to numerology and the multiple meanings behind this number, from astrology to the number of wonders of the ancient world, and even the seven disciplines in Superior Design taught at Esdir.
PackBags / Alei Verspoor
Location: CCR
Celebrating its 10th year, Concentrico Festival repurposes textiles from past installations for a new project. PackBags is a line of bags and accessories created out of recuperated textiles, addressing overconsumption through playful yet intentional design.
Editor's Note: This article was originally published on March 20th, 2024, and updated on April 29th, 2024.
