Book review, Building Design
[For Concéntrico 2025, Logroño] Leopold Banchini Architects enclosed an underwhelming fountain on a traffic island with timber walls to create a temporary public bath house. With simple means, they sheltered an exposed spot on the Gran Vía to allow a new use. And an old one – a reminder that the function of early fountains was to provide water to drink and wash with. It’s interesting to imagine similar potential in London’s roundabouts. A bath house for the Marble Arch pools?
Round About Baths doesn’t actually appear in the new Concéntrico: Urban Innovation Laboratory(Park Books, 2025), as likely the most recent installations came too late for publication. But there are plenty of other projects to inspire. The book surveys the first decade of the festival, which has transformed Logroño and the surrounding countryside of La Rioja with over 150 public space interventions by local and international artists and designers.
The book’s launch at the Instituto Cervantes opened with some Almodóvar-worthy technical mishaps. Everyone was an amateur sound engineer, breaking down any barriers there might have been with the audience, just as these urban installations aim to do. Concéntrico’s founder, Javier Peña Ibáñez discussed the book with artist and spatial designer, Sahra Hersi.
They examined the local meaning of projects like Willem de Haan’s Public Monument. In 2024, the Dutch artist built a small brick ‘house’ in place of the pedestal of one of the city’s most famous statues. It had the trappings of domesticity; a chimney, net curtains and ‘for sale’ sign in the window, table and chairs on the terrace, but also a bronze horse carrying former Prime Minister, General Espartero on the roof….
…Sometimes, Brexile can feel like watching good initiatives in Europe through a window we’ve slammed shut on ourselves. Still, a book like this – and yes, biennales too, at their best – remind us of the value of looking outward. And at a point when for some, urban intervention seems to mean painting a roundabout, Concéntrico suggests how simple, imaginative acts could create common ground. We need more centipede tables and brick benches. More space for encounters that can bring us together and start conversations at the scale that matters, the neighbourhood.
Read the full piece: https://www.bdonline.co.uk/briefing/concentrico-and-the-art-of-everyday-urban-invention/5138538.article
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