The Concéntrico festival held its 12th edition in Logroño in June, transforming the city into a space for architectural experimentation. Since 2015, the event has been distinguished by rejecting isolated design exhibitions, opting instead to build real-scale installations in streets, squares, and vacant lots, thus integrating residents and visitors into the urban environment.
Concéntrico's curation structured the projects around three central themes: Identity and Fiction, Urban Ecologies, and Ephemeral Agents. The Identity and Fiction axis treats the city as a repository of memories and narratives, using architecture to recover urban stories. The Ephemeral Agents axis explores mobile and temporary structures as means to foster new social interactions.
Within the Urban Ecologies axis, the *Shade, Breeze, Cooling* installation, created by NOOF Group, addressed the growing difficulty of staying outdoors in a warming planet. Positioned at a busy intersection, the intervention employed shading structures, misting systems, vegetation, and air currents to modify the immediate atmosphere of a common stretch of urban infrastructure.
NOOF Group clarified that the installation does not aim to simulate a garden or represent nature, but rather to function as a climatic device. Given the increase in temperatures and heatwaves, the focus was on exploring how a light intervention can directly affect the public atmosphere through simple actions, such as blocking solar radiation and activating evaporative cooling with atomized water.
The proposal establishes an artificial ecology where structure, water, air, matter, and vegetation function as a unified system. Although vegetation adds humidity and texture, the core of the project lies in the interaction between technical elements and atmospheric processes. The installation is conceived as a climatic prototype, being light, reversible, and replicable, exposing its technical processes rather than hiding them.
Regarding water consumption, a scarce resource in certain regions, NOOF Group emphasized that water should not merely be an ornament. In the project, it is treated as a consciously managed resource, acting in small-scale evaporative cooling. The coolness comes from the energy required for water to change from liquid to gaseous state, removing latent heat from the environment.
Misting allows for a more efficient application of water compared to fountains or reflecting pools, as fragmenting water into fine particles maximizes the contact area with the air, generating a localized microclimate effect with little water. However, the group recognizes that misting is a situational strategy, requiring rigorous criteria in contexts of water stress, such as sensor control, recirculation, or the use of non-potable water.
Exposure to extreme temperatures is determined by direct radiation and heat retained in paved surfaces, varying drastically between neighborhoods. This view is based on previous experiences of NOOF Group in northern Chile, where shade became an essential architectural response against the vertical summer sun. In Logroño, this premise transforms heat into an infrastructural and social issue, defining who can comfortably enjoy public space.
The conception of the project did not start from a fixed location, but from the need to create a device capable of responding to heat, a recurring condition in the city. This shifted the project's focus from physical form to the local atmospheric behavior. The intervention acts on the air, seeking to create a more bearable atmosphere, transforming moments of exposed waiting or transit into experiences of relief.
Climatic artifacts are seen as forms of light and immediate action. While they do not solve urban complexity alone, they allow intervention in critical points, testing solutions, and initiating a public debate about adapting the existing city, functioning as 'artifacts for a finite world.'
While thermal vulnerability describes the unequal distribution of heat exposure, autonomy refers to the unequal capacity to avoid it. NOOF Group points out that heat imposes spatial and demographic disparities, as those with more autonomy can adjust schedules or use air-conditioned environments, while others remain exposed due to work or mobility reasons.
For NOOF Group, increasing the autonomous reach of climatic interventions like *Shade, Breeze, Cooling* is crucial. The group plans to develop independent (*off-grid*) versions, integrating solar energy, storage, and automated control, so that the project can function in locations without technical infrastructure, such as rural areas or peripheries. This pursuit of self-sufficiency transforms the device from a punctual intervention into a decentralized relief prototype.
The project presented by the Santa Marta Student Center in collaboration with the Mazzanti Team aims to create an architectural space that deeply integrates with the site, appropriating the environment and dissolving among the trees, recognizing the existing vegetation.
The space's roof was designed to merge with the landscaping, resulting in an environment reminiscent of a grove. In this concept, the architecture not only accompanies but also enhances the natural characteristics of the terrain.
This space was conceived as a place for meeting and interaction, where activities such as resting, dialogue, and playing are presented as complementary methods of learning. Students have the opportunity to explore the outdoor environment in various ways, whether relaxing, swinging, climbing, lying down, or jumping, all immersed in nature.
To support the dynamics of the location, sound and interaction devices were incorporated, which serve both to host events and to create ambient sound and act as a communication channel between students, reinforcing the participatory nature of the project.
The proposal includes a flexible structure, designed to adapt to the existing trees and operate as a network capable of growing and adjusting to the specific conditions of the site. Shade, considered an essential meeting point in the city, gave rise to a space that is simultaneously airy, shaded, and pleasant.
The Student Center organizes various zones designated for studying, meetings, relaxation, meals, and leisure. Furthermore, it incorporates a module containing restrooms and a cafeteria, establishing itself as the main convergence point for the entire student community.
