18 Interventions to Reflect on the City at Concéntrico 07

Conéntrico 07 is the Logroño International Architecture and Design Festival, which proposes a reflection on the urban realm and the city. This annual event invites us to rethink our environment through installations, exhibitions, meetings, performances, workshops, and activities. Open to all residents and visitors, it will take place from September 2 to 5, 2021.

Rather than focusing solely on the festival's usual setting, the Historic Center of Logroño, the seventh edition connects this area with other spaces, allowing for new approaches to the urban environment. The new locations are the La Villanueva neighborhood, the Plaza del Ayuntamiento, the new Intermodal Station, the renovated courtyard of the Museum of La Rioja, and Ebro Park, which will host three of the proposals.

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Since 2015, the festival has brought together more than 70 urban installations; this year, the following 18 proposals join the lineup:

Guest Teams / Co-production

• Painted Topographical Landscape / 44 flavours / Germany / Goethe-Institut

"Discovering cities and embracing architecture from the perspective of a painter, skater, or graffiti artist is different, because none of them would visit the same places as a typical tourist or traveler. Their way of observing their surroundings is unique: every corner is a potential spot, an inspiration, or something that leads to a new idea. It could be a new board trick or a way of scrutinizing the different structures and colors of those specific surfaces."

• 1973-2021 / Lanza Atelier / Mexico / Embassy of Mexico

"In November 1973, a team led by architect Rafael Moneo defined the project that would become the Logroño City Hall. Weeks later, the then President of the Government of Spain, Luis Carrero Blanco, died in an ETA attack. The car he was traveling in through Madrid was blown into the air to a height of over 30 meters as a result of explosives placed under the street by the terrorist group. This event intensified the already severe political crisis of the fascist dictatorship. In the midst of this turbulent atmosphere of social unrest, Moneo proposed a project that exemplifies the “idea of a civic, public building, capable of answering the questions that the city's inhabitants raise about collective life as a 'public matter.'” A building that seems to exist for the purpose of creating a large civic plaza."

• Arbre / Laurent Martin / France / Institut français

"We build housing, buildings, towns, cities… More and more concrete, more and more bare sidewalks, devoid of any plants except for weeds that we pull out or spray with herbicide, as if they had no place on the pavement. We encroach further and further into territories, valleys, and forests to build subdivisions or expand our cities—filled with shops, parking lots, and plazas where nothing grows anymore unless it is in planters to confine the roots, leaving the tiles baking in the sun."

• The Dome / Matteo Ghidoni – Enrico Dusi / Italy / Istituto Italiano di Cultura

"The dome is located in the main square – Plaza del Mercado – in front of the Cathedral of Santa María de La Redonda. The dome aims to establish a relationship with the church's architecture: its volume is modeled after the central niche of the facade. Its proportions are found rather than invented."

• 39186 Empty Rooms / VAPAA Collective / Finland / Ibero-American Institute of Finland

Since 1970, 68% of the Earth's vertebrates have gone extinct. For smaller creatures and plants, the figure is likely even higher, with one of the main drivers being the changes in land use over the last 50 years. Urbanization has been rapid, and because contemporary Western societies draw a sharp line between built and natural environments, our cities are not built with the needs of non-human species in mind. 

• Conversations Without Words / Radu Abraham / Romania / Romanian Cultural Institute

"The concept underlying the title stems from the idea of an invitation to a multi-layered dialogue or conversation. The first layer arises from the relationship between the installation and its specific location in the city, which features a very distinct history and aesthetic. Within this context, the proposal contrasts with its surroundings, managing to blend in precisely through this contrast. Although it occupies and assimilates most of the square, it succeeds in maintaining a balanced composition with everything around it, creating a visual conversation with the environment. In this sense, we can observe the relationship—intentionally highlighted in this manner—between the artist's proposal and the existing statue in the Plaza Muralla del Revellín, both sharing the same pedestal and thus establishing the premise for an initial dialogue."

• San Bartolomé Cabin / Paradigma Ariadné / Hungary / Embassy of Hungary

"Paradigma Ariadné's installation is located next to the Church of San Bartolomé in Logroño. This setting is the cornerstone of the architectural concept and the foundation upon which the installation is created. The story of Saint Bartholomew and his tragic end prompted us to think about the relationship between the “body” of buildings and their surface or “skin.” In paintings and statues, Saint Bartholomew is often depicted without his skin, or with his skin shown on its own, as his martyrdom consisted of being flayed alive."

• Monuments to the Sisters of the Revolution / Aleksandra Wasilkowska / Poland / Polish Cultural Institute

"The collective unconscious and the history of architecture are rooted in the utopias of fictional cities and buildings that share a common denominator: they have all been designed by men. Think of Le Corbusier's Radiant City, Archigram's Walking City, the Situationists' New Babylon, Charles Fourier's Phalanstère, Yona Friedman's Spatial City, Frederick John Kiesler's Endless House, Étienne-Louis Boullée's Cenotaph for Isaac Newton, Claude Nicolas Ledoux's Ideal City of Chaux, or Giorgio Rosa's Republic of Rose Island. In the courtyard of the COAR building, an anti-monument has been erected, symbolizing the end of male dominance in the history of architecture."

• Lea / Herrmann & Coufal / Czech Republic / Czech Centre

"At its core, DIY (Do-It-Yourself) is a shared knowledge of how to build things through instruction manuals. By making something ourselves, we do not just create “the object,” but also a relationship: we admire a chair we built ourselves far more than any other."

• Eclipse / SpY / Spain / Logroño Integración del Ferrocarril

"In their architectural origins, oculi functioned as windows or passages for light.  Etymologically, the word derives from the Latin expression “oculus,” which literally translates to “eye.” In the Neolithic period, it was interpreted as a symbol of the constant vigilance and watchfulness of the gods over human actions."

• Types of Spaces / Palma + Hanghar / Mexico – Spain / Cerámica Sampedro – University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning

"The project is located in the passageway of the former La Rioja Tobacco Factory, a narrow, elongated urban space dominated by a monumental red-brick chimney. The project restores the site's status as a built space by consolidating the facades and returning its original unity to the tobacco factory complex. The interior is articulated through a sequence of square rooms measuring 3.6×3.6m, forming a spatial procession of domestic corridors and rooms, thereby reconstructing the void of the passageway."

• Life After / Hori-zonte / Portugal / R6 Living

In the context of the current pandemic, we suddenly found ourselves forced to rethink our way of living, our relationship with our individual selves, our community, and the external forces that shape different societies, the world, and nature. The proposal for the courtyard of the Museum of La Rioja addresses this issue, especially regarding how we invite people to live responsibly and mindfully in our cities once again."

Open Call Winners

• Concéntrico Pavilion / Sauermartins + Mauricio Méndez / Brazil – Bolivia

"In alignment with the festival's theme, the pavilion proposes a reflection on place, the urban environment, the city, and the highly specific, challenging times we are living in. As a landmark of the festival, the pavilion acknowledges the square, the public amenities, and the sculpture, proposing an intervention tied to this specific context."

• The Contemplation of a Limit / Chavarri Estudio / Chile

"A limit is defined, particularly, as a border—the end of one thing and the beginning of another. A bank can also be understood as a limit or end of something in relation to another; in the case of a river, this is determined by the width of the channel that separates them. Therefore, what is an abstract border in the mind takes on a physical dimension and a distance between both banks in reality."

• Support your local landscape / Vivian Rotie + Pablo Saiz del Rio / Cuba – Spain / Bodegas LAN

"David Nash studied sculpture. David Nash built a landscape with Wooden Boulder, and Wooden Boulder constructed an entire imaginary through its journey. Where did this large wooden stone, carved by his own hands, end up? A great archaeological piece described in the rhythm of Georges Perec, recording the ordinary. From the spectacle generated by its journey to the Californian spectacle of Hollywood. The revolution in Havana and its naive graphic communication and escapism campaigns. A hundred flags to block out the anti-Castro messages from the US. Every piece by Carlos Garaicoa that Marcos shows you. Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi. The sad passing of Alberto Corazón. Chillida Leku and Piet Oudolf. Louise Bourgeois. Olafur Eliasson transporting blocks of ice from Greenland to the outside of the Tate. If only a museum would melt. Melted heritage, intangible heritage. Allan Kaprow. Agnes Denes. Petit à Petit, a fable with research undertones by Jean Rouch. Jeanne-Claude and Christo. A brief history of John Baldessari. What have we learned from Las Vegas? Returning to Primavera Sound. A poster, an ad, a notice."

• Circum / P + S Estudio de Arquitectura / Spain / Second prize in Concéntrico 06

"Circum alludes to the primitive act of “enclosing,” and, in doing so, “creating a place.” In this way, in the elementary operation of differentiating between what remains inside (system) and what is outside (environment), the boundary is marked for the first time, establishing an initial way of making architecture. The intention, then, is to open a discussion regarding the indeterminacy of enclosed space, which can host countless acts arising from the communicative chance between inside and outside. Therefore, CIRCUM aims to be an allegory of the highly necessary spatial “indeterminism,” challenging the irrepressible desire to design everything."

Guest Schools

• Intermedio / Escuela Superior de Diseño de La Rioja / Spain

"How do we change an entrance? How can we create a new way of access that in itself constitutes an experience? How do we turn the school into an active space for the city as well? These are the questions we ask ourselves when facing a building as monumental as the Escuela Superior de Diseño de La Rioja. An emblematic building in Logroño, it features an abrupt entrance separated from the public street by pavement and gardens. How can we connect it to the city and make its gardens a living, public space?"

• Soucoupe Populaire / École Supérieure de Design de Troyes / France

"With this installation, they wanted to create a popular place made of poplar (the tree of the people). It is a meeting point that attracts both young and old thanks to its intriguing shape. The goal of the saucer is to propose various activities so that festival attendees can appropriate the space, creating their own unforeseen uses."