Concéntrico Logroño International Festival of Architecture and Design, España, Architects, Rioja Design Images

Concéntrico Logroño International Festival of Architecture and Design

Photographs of Architectural Interventions in this historic Northern Spanish City

12 May 2018

Concéntrico Logroño International Festival of Architecture and Design 2018

Photos from 2018 Concéntrico Logroño International Festival of Architecture and Design

The city of Logroño hosted its fourth edition of the Concéntrico Architecture and Design Festival in the historic center of the town.

This year 14 teams from Germany, Great Britain, Spain, Italy, France, Czech Republic, Argentina, Andalucía and Basque Country were invited to exhibit their projects in hidden courtyards and also new places around the city.

BoysPlayNice were invited by Czech studio Mjölk architekti to join them on a road trip to Logroño and to document the process of building their project. It was during the trip that we came up with the idea of documenting not just one team.

Thanks to Javier Peña Ibáñez, creator of the initiative and one of the organizers of the festival, the photographers Jakub Skokan and Martin Tůma were given a freedom to document the whole festival. Here´s what they came back with.

The fourth edition of Concéntrico festival took place in the city of Logroño from 27th April to 1st May 2018.

All photographs by Jakub Skokan and Martin Tůma / BoysPlayNice.

Glimpse:

Mjolk – Lantern:

Lucas S Paltzer & Sebastian Andres Podesta – La Plaza:

Plastique Fantastique – RINGdeLUXE:

Jorge Penadés – La chabola:

Davide Marchetti con Noumena – Otravision:

Collectif Parenthese – Reflection:

Concéntrico Logroño

Concéntrico 04

Concéntrico, a festival of the city

Concéntrico is the Logroño International Festival of Architecture and Design, a reflection on the urban environment and the city. This year’s edition, Concéntrico 04, takes place from 27 April to 1 May 2018.

The Festival invites you to explore the city through installations, exhibitions, discussions, activities and performances, creating a connection between places, squares, streets, terraces and hidden spaces that usually go unnoticed.

The latest edition of the festival brings together installations created by 14 teams of national and international architects and designers, experimenting with new fields of environmental design. This establishes a dialogue between the city, its heritage, and contemporary architecture, enabling citizens to reflect on all these areas.

Plastique Fantastique (Berlin), AA Architectural Association Interprofessional Studio (London), Jorge Penadés (Málaga), David Bestué (Barcelona), Davide Marchetti (Rome), Collectif Parenthèse (Paris), Mjölk (Prague), Blurarquitectura (Logroño), Jairo Rodríguez (Burgos), Sebastián Andrés Podestá and Lucas Seré Pletzer (Buenos Aires), Fernando Cruzado, Julia Díaz, F. Javier Fernández and Ane Villaverde (Andalucía and Basque Country) and Miriam Alonso, Patricia Ramos and Paula Mena (Madrid). New this year, the San Sebastian School of Architecture is taking part as an invited school of the festival.

The exhibition and activities broaden the focus to new international contexts, such as Czech architect Martin Rajniš, who is exhibiting his work specialising in wood constructions, and Migrant Garden, a reflection on the processes of migration through small architectures, among others. Rounding out this field are the Discussions on curating, research and teaching, that will encourage learning and cross-disciplinary conversation about some of the most prestigious happenings in architecture, design and the city, which are currently being held in countries such as Portugal, France, Poland and Chile.

The final part of the programme is the participation of the La Rioja School of Design, the associate school of the festival, which includes the exhibition I’m design, the project Places in the Garden at their own location, the conference with Angélica Barco and the workshop with Caniche, the publishers who will also be present in the Santos Ochoa bookstore along with Ediciones Rua, who will attend the festival from a literary perspective as part of Editors in the City.

The city

The fourth edition of Concéntrico broadens the festival’s usual focus on the historic centre of Logroño to connect with other spaces, allowing for new approaches to the urban environment.

New spaces add to the terraces and squares that are further away from the day-to-day life of the city, due to their heritage, urban, spatial and historic value. They become part of the proposed route for visitors and residents to allow them to discover the architecture of the city.

The goal of Concéntrico is to open up these symbolic places and reinterpret them through the different architecture and design teams and their interventions, with a specific project for each location. By doing so, we seek to reveal the intimate relationship that exists between contemporary architecture and its capacity to transform the lives of people.

The festival is aimed at a wide audience, with multiple different suggested routes for an unconventional look at the city. The architectures, exhibitions, discussions and activities are all elements of reflection and observation, to awaken the desire to reclaim the joy of spaces, of the city.

The locations

One of the most important features of this festival is the character of the locations. Interior courtyards, hidden spaces or new places, all part of a connective tissue that has been of great importance in the history of the city but which are now rarely visited, or not even open to regular transit. The common factor of all the selected spaces is that they lack a clear function, and therefore are places in which one walks by without stopping.

These places, common in almost every city, slowly disappear from common knowledge, and even the collective imagination, turning them into hidden spaces. Yet they still maintain their own identity, and can be transformed very easily with just a few elements. Something which allows contemporary architecture the chance to reveal and awaken these dormant spaces.

Festival team

Since 2015, Concéntrico has been organised by the La Rioja Cultural Foundation of Architects and Javier Peña Ibáñez, creator of the initiative, in collaboration with the City of Logroño and the La Rioja Government Centre of Design. Garnica, Bodegas LAN and Acción Cultural Española are the main partners.

The festival is also supported by the partner institutions Goethe Insitut, Czech Centre, Embassy of the Czech Republic, Institut français, Istituto Italiano di Cultura, the Ibero-American Institute of Finland and Visit Finland. The La Rioja School of Design and the Technical School of Architecture of the University of the Basque Country are the associate schools of the festival.

The partners are Construcciones Calleja, Hermandad Nacional de Arquitectos, Santos Ochoa, Biblioteca de La Rioja, Instituto de Estudios Riojanos, Asociación Riojana de Amigos del Camino de Santiago, Diócesis de Calahorra y La Calzada – Logroño and Caritas La Rioja. Media partners are Plataforma Arquitectura, Disup!, Experimenta, Room and Arquitectura & Diseño.

Location: Logrono, Spain