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 with Matali Crasset and Maider López 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.
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Monumento a Espartero
In an attempt to relate to an otherwise inaccessible monument, Willem de Haan proposes a playful reinterpretation of the statue’s pedestal. The temporary intervention challenges the honorary character of statues in public spaces, combining the aesthetics of monumentality with a relatable scene out of everyday life.
Razzle Dazzle / Sara Ricciardi Studio
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. Reminiscent of tactics of wartime deception as similar patterns were used to create confusion amongst opponents, the vibrant installation in the square prompts dynamism, urging citizens to be flexible in perception, action, and thought. In a nod to activist interventions, the playful yet purposeful stage will be activated through parkour performances, advocating for movement and openness.
Dancing Bench / Soft Baroque
Parque del Carmen
The dancing furniture series breathes life into mundane objects through parallel plane movement. By manually rotating these pieces, viewers enter a realm of surreal optical illusions and unique ergonomic sensations. These pieces fully embrace this notion of object performance, engaging with viewers dynamically. Visually, they offer a satisfying experience, as dynamics create a slight distortion of its image. Yet, in physical interaction, such as sitting and rotating, they provide a meditative and calming experience akin to a rocking chair or hammock.
The Wall / MUOTO + Georgi Stanishev
Plaza del Revellín
The installation is to be 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.
Dancing carwash / Agence Spatiale
Pasaje Chimenea
Dancing Carwash reimagines architecture as a dance partner, inviting engagement in its enigmatic choreography. Inspired by traditional Spanish dances like flamenco, it aims to evoke the joy of movement and celebration. Using the imagery of inflating dresses and unfurling fabrics, it appropriates the automatic carwash to explore the evolving relationship between objects and volume.
Fuente / Corvin Cristian
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.
Public Utilities / Outpost Office
Plaza 1º Mayo + Centros educativos
Plaza Primero de Mayo hosts a large-scale drawing inspired by human movement, reminiscent of urban construction markings. Comprising broken colored lines, the drawing offers various paths and possibilities for visitors to engage with. These paths, seemingly intricate yet easily drawn, 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.
Off-Season Pavilion / KOSMOS
Plaza Santiago
"Off-Season Pavilion" offers an eco-conscious alternative to transient festival architecture by repurposing locally available resources in Logroño. Utilizing "jaulones de vino," large metal cages from wine storage, the installation capitalizes on their seasonal availability during the Concentrico Festival. Embracing circular construction principles, it advocates for material reuse and promotes environmental sustainability.
Jardín gráfico / Malte Martin
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.
Basic Forms / RaivioBumann
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.
Open Segments / SYN architects
Patio COAR
The Najd region's traditional courtyard houses inspire the modular pavilion's design, emphasizing privacy and communal gatherings. Constructed from wooden planks and natural mesh material, it echoes the region's values. Openings in the pavilion's walls allow light to enter. 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.
PackBags / Alei Verspoor
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.
Poplar Assembly / Javier García
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 occupied, 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.
Cuaderno de surcos / ji arquitectos + Blas Antón
Viña Lanciano
The second winning proposal in the same competition, 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.
Palo de Mayo / JBVA + Eugenio Nuzzo + Anatole Poirier + Alex Roux
Concha del Espolón
The third winning project addresses the absence of a tree in Parc del Espolón, turning it into an opportunity for creative intervention. In its place, a Palo de Mayo emerges as a focal point, integrating various urban elements into a cohesive urban fragment. Inspired by the surroundings, including the Espartero Monument and the Concha soundscape, it invites celebration and exchange.
Scenius 26003 / Daryan Knoblauch
La Calle a 10 años
This new program, in collaboration with Porto Academy, reimagines city building by incorporating a time-centric design approach. Winner Daryan Knoblauch and finalists BEAR, Matilde Cassani, DF_DC, and salazarsequeromedina tackled the question: "How could a street evolve with a ten-year strategy?" Knoblauch's winning proposal, Scenius 26003, critiques conventional city planning by advocating for a ten-year learning process from Logroño's streets. Through engagement with locals and experts, it proposes an open, iterative approach, opposing the homogenization seen in current planning trends.
La Citerne-Lit / Fred Sancère + Encore Heureux architects
Plaza de San Bartolomé
The Citerne-Lit project embodies a "camouflage" concept, utilizing agricultural imagery to create a unique overnight experience in nature. 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.
Make it rain / Quentin Gérard + Guillaume Deman + Elisabeth Terrisse de Botton + Matthieu Brasebin
Museo de La Rioja
Make it Rain addresses urban cooling amid the climate crisis by leveraging the thermal properties of water-soaked bricks. Utilizing water from the Ebro River fosters a collective moment of water collection within Concentrico's temporary framework. Situated in the Museo de la Rioja courtyard, it offers an informal environment featuring a brick floor, sun-protective textiles, and a water well.
What comes through the wall / Traffic Design
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 intense 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.
¡Saca las sillas! / ESD Madrid
Biblioteca La Rioja
The La Rioja Library serves as the canvas for this transformation, inviting visitors to construct objects according to their preferences. A dynamic organism traverses the central courtyard, offering lattices from which seats and tables can be fashioned, allowing visitors to claim their space. 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, people, and texts.
