javier peña - ibanez + concéntrico
Portrait courtesy of Javier Peña — Ibáñez.
Javier Peña — Ibáñez (born 1985), an architect based in Madrid, is a curator, researcher, teacher and consultant in architecture, design and the city. He is the Director of Concéntrico, the Logroño International Festival of Design and Architecture, and focuses on the management, curation and dissemination of cultural projects.
Trained at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid, Universidad Politécnica, Peña — Ibáñez founded Concéntrico in 2015, a festival that combines the realisation of other projects in the context of architecture and the city. He is also the artistic direction of TAC! Festival de Arquitectura Urbana in Granada (2022). Further, the architect co-curated the exhibition Madrid Diversa at CentroCentro (2022), the exhibition A vision from Spain – New European Bauhaus in Brussels (2022), La hoja at Matadero Madrid, an intervention in the space of FAHR 021. 3 (2021 until January 2023), as well as the direction of the documentary Punto de Inflexión (2020). Previous projects include the urban curatorship of the Biennial La Forêt Monumentale in Rouen – France (2019), Experimenta Pontevedra, Festival de Diseño Urbano (2018) or the architecture programme at the Biennial of Contemporary Art of Maia – Portugal (2019).
LUCIJA ŠUTEJ: I read that you dwell into furniture design and woodworking- I would love to explore how it translates to your work in architecture.
JAVIER PEÑA- IBANEZ: I finished my studies in 2010 and started working as an assistant to curator Ariana Cantis because I loved her approach to architecture and cities. In parallel, I developed my own ideas about connecting cities and citizens, through set designs and installations. My artistic approach comes from my work as an exhibition designer, connecting the small scale of furniture. It was a slow process, transforming me into a creator more connected with culture and the events I do now.
LŠ: You established - Concéntrico, the Logroño International Festival of Design and Architecture, which has grown significantly since its inception in 2015. What opportunities did you see in the location you picked for the festival?
JPI: I chose Logroño because it's the city where I was born. I always thought of this festival as a process. I wanted to develop project that would allow for learning with people and understanding the themes, approaches and formats better year by year. The scale of the city is a nice tool to understand what we do because you can walk through different urban landscapes - from the river and nature to the old part of the city with its tourist problems, to the modern city and new parts that weren't built when we started in 2015.
Talk with Pola Mora - 2018.
Amanita Muscaria by Patricia Ramos Mateos, Miriam Alonso Barrio and Paula Mena Albarrán - 2018.
Amanita Muscaria by Patricia Ramos Mateos, Miriam Alonso Barrio and Paula Mena Albarrán - 2018.
An Elevated Table in the Landscape by Jennyfher Alvarado + Álvaro Gonzalez - 2023.
LŠ: Were there specific issues you were trying to address - from contributing to cultural planning for urban regeneration, addressing decreasing population, to preservation of the historical center?
JPI: In the beginning, we focused on the old part of the city, which had become disconnected from the people. The main street, Portales, had started to see the vacuum since the 80s as the inhabitants moved to the outskirts. There were social problems - issues with housing degradation, poverty, security, and nightlife.
We tried to bring people back- to rediscover the city through our eyes and points of view. In the first year, we installed about seven projects in that area, by the following authors - Octavio Pérez, Boamistura, David Azpurgua, João Branco + Paula del Río, Guillermo Trapiello, 2L Arquitectos y Hevia + F. Bayo. These installations helped to present the idea to the table of occupying the street with an open conversation. Perhaps there was even a certain audacity behind it - an intention to be proactive and to have a set of projects that could highlight the needs that arise in the city, because year after year, people told us they hadn't been back to that area since the last Concéntrico.
After the third edition in 2018, we started to expand to different plazas and places, working with the urban scale and the idea of the city as a scenario where things happen. We wanted to test the ideas of interventions in different urban fabrics that would broaden the conversation about the heritage city, the representative area, which now has new tensions of use (through mass tourism), and these projects would naturally take us to new areas where we seeked to resolve challenges presented by the residents or accompany processes that were already open.
Lantern by Mjölk - 2018.
RINGdeLUXE by Plastique Fantastique - 2018.
Urban Salon by Gabrielle Vinson, Quentin Devoyer and Edwin Toledo - 2016.
Courtesy Concentrico Festival.
LŠ: How has the vision for the festival changed over subsequent editions?
JPI: Many things have changed! We now work with schools to develop projects (IES Batalla de Clavijo, IES Sagasta, CEIP Las Gaunas, CEIP Duquesa de la Victoria, CEIP Madre de Dios.). Also, architects and designers who come here feel they have a different level of engagement compared to their previous work. They understand how to use architecture and design as tools to connect and develop places.
We've opened calls for new alliances with local institutions, associations, schools, and entities that want to be part of the festival. We're also connecting with cities abroad to test our learning about thinking in cities.
Otravisión by Davide Marchetti with Noumena, 2018.
Circo aéreo by KOGAA - 2020.
LŠ: And what key lessons have you learned from each edition and of the city of Logroño?
JPI: I have learned many things from the city, above all that any circumstance is very volatile and that the processes of change are slow in time but then irreversible. Therefore, we must always be alert, as if we had a radar that allows us to detect changes that are not positive in order to remedy them.
We work guided by each response and, in a certain way, by the intuition and experience we have acquired. The projects are woven together like a complete and complex story in terms of themes, practices and ways of interpreting the city. Therefore, now that we are facing the publication of a book of the past 10 years, it allows us the opportunity to look back, which has been very intense.
Eclipse by SpY - 2021.
LŠ: What challenges do you face in setting up such a large-scale architecture festival?
JPI: There are many challenges! Economically, we have many partners from local to national governments, regional entities, and cultural institutions from Europe and beyond. They all contribute financially, so there are many “owners" of the festival, resulting in a mix of ideas of thinking about cities. We're always moving and changing themes to test new things and grow with the people. We want to avoid repeating ourselves and are focused of new ways for the future.
LŠ: What are some important points you want people to take away about Logroño?
JPI: First, we want people to understand that architecture and design are relevant to improving their lives and understanding their context, just like photography, painting, or music. We want to make architecture and design accessible and easy for people to connect with. After the pandemic, people are thinking more about the quality of life in their immediate surroundings. Issues like urban mobility, green spaces, and public spaces have become more relevant.
Support your local landscape by Vivian Rotie – Pablo Saiz del Río - 2021.
LŠ: Architecture festivals like Concéntrico activate urban spaces in unique ways. How do you choose the locations and themes for the installations, and what role do you see these temporary interventions playing in the long-term transformation of the city? Can these interventions contribute to changes on an urban level?
JPI: I think that everything is interpreted as a useful process in which time is one of the fundamental values. It mainly starts with presenting the value of architecture and design to improve people's lives, their environments and their ways of relating in public spaces. Focusing on these points is essential to demonstrate the capacity for transformation and improvement. It is a long process, which gains strength through memory and in a new phase that we are starting now - it will have other ways of presenting itself in the city. Therefore, I think it is relevant to think about time as a resource to think about the urban.
With Concéntrico, we create an intense experience in the city, bringing many people and ideas together. It's different from the EUROPAN project, where we work from the top down with the Spanish government to give young architects opportunities to work on public spaces. With Concéntrico, we create a network of cities and show municipalities that this way of working can be beneficial for them.
A Dome by Matteo Ghidoni – Enrico Dusi - 2021.
LŠ: In your view, how can architecture festivals like Concéntrico contribute to a broader public understanding of not only architecture but also urbanism? Can they influence public policy or urban planning decisions?
JPI: I believe that the more tools there are to translate many of the city's complex issues, the better the support of citizens will be. Therefore, all projects that promote this knowledge, the collective learning, will be very useful for this final objective. These issues need to be addressed from many angles, since the target audience is society as a whole and each person has different backgrounds and daily problems. For this reason, I believe in projects that are inclusive and accessible, that are modulated to be able to add new perspectives.
El Ciempies by Picado de blas - 2017.
Artefactos by Daniel Montes – Sara Canalejas - 2016.
Love Me Tender by Guillermo Trapiello - 2015.
LŠ: You've worked on various international projects and festivals. What differences do you notice in how various cultures and cities engage with architecture and public spaces? How do these perspectives influence your approach as a curator?
JPI: I think that each project fulfills a function. The most interesting thing, when approached with an open perspective, is to work with time; but then there are other proposals, which are expository, which challenge professionals. The city and public spaces are fundamental issues throughout the world, it is necessary that we respond to the current moment and it is clear that after the pandemic, more and more people demand quality of life and the habitability of cities as a fundamental fact. These balances are important to rebalance the tensions that occur in spaces with different interests and these formats can be used to explore and test new responses.
LŠ: What role can design innovation contribute to the preservation of heritage highlighted through an architectural festival?
JPI: I believe preservation shouldn't be static. We always try to renew or create new interpretations of heritage elements, putting them in a contemporary context. For example, if the Cathedral of Logroño is made of stone, we might think about it in terms of fabric, fluidity, and movement, but at the same scale. We try to put these things in context with new practices and materials, making them relevant rather than just static photographs.
Boogie by MAIO - 2016.
En el Túnel by Branco del Rio - 2015.
Dark Sky by Matali Crasset - 2022.
LŠ: With the rise of digitalization and AI, how do you see architecture festivals developing in the future?
JPI: The power of Concéntrico is the real connection we create. We provide people with freedom and imagination when they discover something new in groups with family or friends. We're more focused on the physical experience, but we do use digital tools to share our work and create an archive of ways to work with cities. We'll have to see how this develops in the future.
LŠ: What new ideas or concepts are you excited to explore in the context of urban architecture and public engagement?
JPI: We are currently exploring the formats that we will tackle in the new season - because we want to go beyond a single format and incorporate different proposals that broaden the scope that we continue to seek. Since we started in 2015, the city has changed, as have the needs of the people. We are always on the alert and in that certain proactive situation we detect how to move forward to continue being useful.
*all images are courtesy of Concéntrico festival.