From April 25th to May 1st, 2024, in the Spanish city of Logroño, Concéntrico prepares for its 10th 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.
The urban installations represent perhaps the most visible and engaging aspect of the festival, exploring the theme through design and aiming to generate interactions between architects and the wider public. Since 2015, the festival has created over 120 urban installations. Tis year, the invited architects and designers propose a wide variety of approaches, from renaturalizing public spaces, to reinterpreting vernacular methods, reusing materials from previous editions, creating explorations through movement, or challenging the concept of housing. Explore the full list of upcoming urban installations prepared for this edition.
In addition to architects and designers, the festival engages and is supported by cultural and educational institutions, under the coordination of the Cultural Foundation of the Architects of La Rioja and Javier Peña Ibáñez, founder of the initiative. As a celebration of the city, Concéntrico also provides the setting for multiple interdisciplinary activities, with street radio, the most contemporary music, parkour, cinema and reading featuring in the program. All activities are free and open to all audiences, with detailed schedule of the events published on Concéntrico’s official page.
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Concéntrico 10 Reveals The Complete List of Upcoming Urban Installations and Program“The Street in 10 years” is a new program launched this year in partnership with Porto Academy. The initiative proposes a exploration of how cities transform in time. Daryan Knoblauch’s winning proposal for the “The Street in 10 years” program challenges conventional urban planning by advocating for a decade-long strategy for the streets of Logroño. The approach aims to emphasize the importance of active participation and dialogue in improving urban dynamics. The first act of Scenius 26003 will take place in Concéntrico 10 with the temporary intervention Megaphone, an element that will reappear annually until 2034 as a symbol of communication and change.
As part of Concéntrico's social engagement, the festival collaborates with various institutions to ensure that the installations and methodologies persist within their premises beyond the festival. This year two special project are carried out with the French designer Matali Crasset and the Spanish artist Maider López, which will be developed in 20 educational centres throughout Spain in the 2024/25 school year.
Previous editions of the festival welcomed interventions from both recognized and up-and-coming designers, including Studio Ossidiana, Tudor Vlāsceanu Architect, Rintala Eggertsson Architects, or Piovenefabi. Opening up conversations about community and local identities, as well as matters of inclusivity, the changing definitions of domesticity or the challenges of ecology, the festival represents an opportunity for exploration through design. Concéntrico 10 is one of the architecture and design-related events happening this year recommended by ArchDaily.