Nothing but Bricks

Concéntrico is the name of an annual festival taking place in Logroño, Spain that is intended to encourage people to consciously experience the city and to perceive or get to know urban places for the first time that are not normally the focus of attention. Interventions and installations explore interstices, create context, and link the past and present.

On the site of a former tobacco factory there is a narrow, short passageway, hardly present in the urban fabric, which leads directly to a high smokestack. Hanghar and Palma chose this location to implement a sequence of six strictly geometric spatial structures, made entirely of thermal bricks, on the same floor area that fits precisely between the walls of the adjacent houses and to provide a special experience away from the busy streets. One immerses oneself in a world that sharpens perception: of space, light, air and permeability, of progress and rest, of the static uniformity of brick walls. Despite its linearity, the installation has a labyrinthine character due to the towering walls, which block any view except up and towards the smokestack, and which are surprisingly rearranged in all the courtyards.

In contrast to the perfectly constructed walls is the floor, covered in brick chips. It also contributes to the variety of sensory sensations: Walking requires attention and slowness; resistance has to be overcome and the fragments crunch when walked on. The continuity of the material is maintained, the experience is diverse. One can imagine that many visitors walked the path repeatedly to experience this journey through spaces and the emotions associated with it several times. “It is a poetic journey through different spatial schemes,” says jury member Christine Conix. “We see something powerful and playful in it,” stresses Diego Escamilla from Palma – and both are right.