Habitar el Río was created for Concéntrico 2025, the International Festival of Architecture and Design in Logroño.
The festival reimagines underused public spaces through temporary installations, inviting architects and designers to explore how we relate to the city through themes such as climate, water, food, and social rituals.
The 2025 edition emphasized ecological awareness and collective inhabitation, turning the city into a testing ground for sustainable and inclusive urban
futures.
This project was installed on the north bank of the Ebro river, between an underused concrete dock and the season-shifting water levels of the river.
This transitional condition represented the opportunity to create a habitable space that would promote the interaction between the man-made city and the natural
environment.
Our installation responded to both the Festival’s intentions and to site conditions by reactivating a neglected riverfront edge—once a bathing area, now reduced to a passageway—with a hand-made shaded wooden space that encouraged both environmental responsiveness and social rituals such as pausing, learning, exchanging and contemplating river life.
The southern façade opened to the river while remaining shaded from direct sunlight. On the north, plywood panels block glare from the adjacent concrete
wall and facilitate passive ventilation by directing hot air upward—helping to dissipate the heat absorbed by the slab throughout the day.
This new ‘Place’ became a calm, protected retreat where visitors could sit, lie down, or pass through while observing the river’s daily activity—canoeists rowing,
listening to birds singing, trees shifting in the wind, currents flowing, and the barking of dogs on their daily walks.
On the northern side, a second bench was added during the construction phase responding to activities already happening on site: Canoeists often used the platform to prepare equipment or teach newbies techniques and theoretical aspects of the sport.
This addition completed the aim of connecting the river and the city by means of a transitional space or new ‘infrastructure’ that looked to and served both.
The structure was built collaboratively with students from the Faculty of Architecture at CESUGA (Centro de Estudios Universitarios de Galicia), between
prefabrication in A Coruña and on-site assembly in Logroño. The project was supported by Maderas Besteiro, Bandalux, Xunta de Galicia, and the Spanish
Association for Forestry Sustainability (PEFC).
After Concentrico’s closure and the removal of all installations, Habitar el rio was moved and re-built on the mountains near Logroño, in the town of Viniegra de Abajo, next to the river Urbión. It will remain indefinitely.
