festival: The Latest Architecture and News

From April 25th to May 1st, 2024, in the Spanish city of Logroño, Concéntrico prepares for its 10^th anniversary edition. Envisioned as a contemplation of changing urban environments and an opportunity to share insights about these processes, this year’s International Festival of Architecture and Design incorporates new formats to engage a wider audience and explore time as a catalyst for change in urban and social design. The festival expands its program, featuring 21 installations by designers of 20 different nationalities, in addition to several other initiatives and explorations.

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The annual Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival has opened in Los Angeles with a selection of large-scale art installations curated by the Public Art Company in collaboration with Paul Clemente. The festival grounds at the Empire Polo Field have been reimagined with three newly commissioned works by a diverse group of artists, architects, and designers. Challenging conventional norms and experimenting with new technologies and artistic expressions, these temporary interventions are an invitation for playful exploration, connection, and contemplation, enhancing the festivalgoer’s experience.

According to Raffi Lehrer, the founder of Public Art Company and Curatorial Advisor for Coachella's art program, the aim of these installations is not to simply adorn the festival but “to create environments that provoke thought, evoke emotion, and encourage a shared experience among all attendees.” By collaborating with artists from different fields, the music festival gains a new perspective, opening up its grounds for experimentation and play.

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The annual festival Burning Man has revealed the design of the 2024 Temple at Black Rock City, which will become the central installation during the festival happening between August 25th and September 2nd, 2024, in Black Rock Desert, Nevada. Titled “The Temple of Together,” the proposal is designed by Caroline Ghosn, the first BIPOC, female Temple lead artist. The proposal takes cues from neo-gothic religious architecture, combined with Art Deco styles and Lebanese Khaizaran weaving techniques to create a symbol of unity and respect. The design was selected following an international competition that seeks to find novel interventions that fit within the Burning Man tradition.

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Now in its 10^th edition, Concéntrico, the international festival of architecture and design in Logroño, has announced the winners of the open calls for urban interventions. Responding to the call to ‘Celebrate the City,’ the winning proposals will be temporarily built in Plaza Escuelas Trevijano, in Viña Lanciano of Bodegas LAN, and in Paseo del Espolón in the Spanish town of Logroño. The Festival welcomes visitors between April 25 and May 1, 2024, to explore the city through installations, exhibitions meetings, and performances.

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Happening between November 7 and 12, Dubai Design Week 2023 brought together over 500 designers, architects, and creative practitioners to explore the relationship between traditional practices and emerging technologies in an effort to create more environmental sustainability and design-led social impact solutions. As one of the most important cultural events in the Middle East, the festival brings forward a wide offering of installations, artworks, and immersive experiences, all exploring important topics of eco-friendly design.

This year’s interventions and installations drew inspiration from the region’s natural ecosystems as well as local traditions and craftsmanship while merging these practices with innovative technologies, biomaterial explorations, and reimagined ways of practicing. Across the interventions, a recurring motif emerges, that of celebrating Middle Eastern heritage and engaging productively with vernacular practices.

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Burning Man, the annual festival taking place in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, has opened on August 27th, with thousands of festivalgoers gathering to create the Black Rock City, a ‘temporary metropolis’ complete with numerous installations, artworks, and pavilions that celebrate “community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance.” This year, however, the festival experience has been different, as heavy rains inundated the desert and festival site, creating thick, ankle-deep mud. The roads to and from the festival have been closed as large vehicles risk remaining stuck in the mud. While some people have left the site by walking out, the majority of the 70,000 campers remain stranded, as reported by CNN.

Ma Yansong revealed The City of Time, a performance space and the location of a 300-hour artist residency created for the Aranya Theater Festival in China. Following the metaphor of avian migration, the Migratory Birds 300 is an artist residency program that brings together 300 creators from diverse fields and backgrounds. From June 12 to June 25, Ma Yansong’s architectural intervention will host a wide array of artistic expressions, including shows, installations, sculptures, performance art, paintings, and videos, including 131 group works and 194 individual projects.

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“Another Breach in the Wall’ was the chosen theme for the main exhibition presented at Beta 2022, the Timișoara Architecture Biennial, which ran from 23 September to 23 October 2022. Curated by Daniel Tudor Munteanu and Davide Tommaso Ferrando, it aimed to explore the concept of loopholes, a term referring both to inadequacies in a set of regulations and an arrow slit in a defensive wall. The exhibition aimed to inspire action an empower citizens to appropriate the urban fabric by exposing submissive urban strategies. The projects and actions presented were selected based on their potential to create novel urban spaces by questioning the laws that regulate the use of public space.

The first full-size London Design Festival (LDF) for three years, and the event’s 20th anniversary year, this was meant to be a celebration. But life, as the saying goes, had other plans. Rocked by the news of HRH Queen Elizabeth II’s passing, the country, and indeed the world started the London Design Festival in a period of mourning. Having reigned over the densest period of design innovation in human history, however, her majesty was no stranger to change.

With long-running themes like sustainability, materials, economic crises, and digital futures never higher in the public’s consciousness, LDF ’22 wasn’t just a professional meet and greet, but a chance to share some much-needed positivity with design enthusiasts, as well as locals, just passing by. Here are the most interesting and talked-about installations and talks from nine days of reflection on the past and hope for the future.

Nevada's annual Burning Man has retured to the Black Rock Desert, after a three-year physical attendance hiatus due to the pandemic. From August 28 until September 5th, this year's festival explored the theme of "Walking Dreams", celebrating the dreamers who channel the power of dreams and imagination, both in literal and figurative ways. Similar to every year, the pavilions that were installed in the desert explored the theme in creative and unexpected ways.

This year, many of the installations approached themes of ecology and sustainability. Some of the installations were built with reused materials, including an interactive light sculpture made from plastic recovered from the ocean. Every year, the Burning Man festival issues a number of grants, funded from revenues from ticket sales, for the purpose of partially funding specific art projects.

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"Concéntrico wants to achieve a better city", says Javier Peña as he inaugurates the International Festival of Architecture and Design of Logroño in Spain. An event that since its first edition in 2015 has proposed rediscovering the spaces of interest in the historic center, reflecting on the urban environment through different proposals for installations and ephemeral exhibitions. This year, it celebrates its eighth meeting from the 1st to the 6th of September.

Videos

After a three-year physical attendance hiatus due to the pandemic, Nevada's annual Burning Man is making a return to the Black Rock Desert. From August 28 until September 5th, this year's festival will welcome thousands of burners to celebrate music and art in a temporary metropolis dedicated to "community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance". Ahead of its 2022 inauguration, we are taking a look at some of the best installations to have been constructed during Burning Man's previous editions.

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With a mission to support, empower, and grow the city's design sector, New York's annual design festival, the NYCxDESIGN presented a selection of architectural installations, talks, and events to celebrate global creative accomplishments, share new ideas, and inspire through design. This year, the festival returned for its tenth edition, running from May 10th - 20th. Having been a special anniversary, this year showcased New York's creative diversity and talent, putting on display its designers, makers, manufacturers, innovative design businesses, as well as world-class cultural and academic design institutions.

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Syrian architects Marwa Al-Sabouni and Ghassan Jansiz bring an Arabic-inspired architectural element to the seafront of Hove as part of this year’s Brighton Festival. The temporary pavilion is built in the shape of the traditional arcade called The Riwaq. Conceived as a place that brings people together, the installation will host free cultural and community events, all organized as part of England’s largest annual multi-arts festival. Established in 1967, the Brighton Festival celebrates music, theatre, dance, art, film, literature, debate, and outdoor events in various locations across Brighton, Hove, and East Sussex.

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