In Logroño, the Spanish capital of the autonomous community of La Rioja, the week-long edition of Concéntrico – International Festival of Architecture and Design, an event dedicated to the urban environment and city living, has recently ended. Through installations, meetings, activities and exhibitions, the event invites citizens and visitors to explore the city through new lenses, stimulating dialogues on public space and places of coexistence.

In addition to the more than seventy installations gathered in the five editions of the event, there are eighteen interventions made this year led by director and curator Javier Peña Ibáñez and proposed by teams of international architects and designers including: Lanza Atelier, Laurent Martin, Matteo Ghidoni – Enrico Dusi, VAPAA Collective, Radu Abraham, Paradigma Ariadné, Herrmann & Coufal, SpY, Aleksandra Wasilkowska, Palma + Hanghar, 44 flavours, hori-zonte.

With a program enriched by meetings and conversations – thanks to the intervention of institutions such as the Bauhaus Foundation Dessau, the Lisbon Triennial, Storefront for Art and Architecture and Mextrópoli – this year expands the usual focus, the historic center of Logroño, expanding the scope with areas that allow the stimulation of new approaches to the urban environment. The objective set by the event was, in fact, to intervene in symbolic places of the local community, reinterpreting them and inventing new places, and with them a new idea of the city. Examples include creating a black dome intermodal station of the city (SpY), or the tensile structure installed in the Plaza del Mercado in front of the Cathedral of Santa Maria de La Redonda (Matteo Ghidoni – Enrico Dusi).

The installations that animated the city are places “selected for their high landscape and ecological value”, explain the organizers. Ecology and design are key factors in this year's debate, while the design of the pavilions was oriented by principles such as reuse and recycling, using as main material wood panels produced by Garnica, a renewable, recyclable, reusable and biodegradable product.