Conéntrico is an International Architecture and Design Festival that proposes to reflect on the city of Logroño (Spain) through the revitalization of undervalued public spaces. Its latest edition, Conéntrico 04, takes place between April 27 and May 1, 2018, in the Historic Center of Logroño. The festival invites visitors to explore the city through installations, exhibitions, meetings, activities, and performances that connect venues, plazas, streets, courtyards, and hidden spaces that usually go unnoticed in daily life. Jairo Rodríguez integrates the greatest number of senses in a sauna in the middle of the courtyard of the Municipal Pilgrims' Hostel.
Description by the team. Jairo Rodríguez is an architect and has been a partner since 2005 at Oaestudio, where they develop their multidisciplinary practice. The team's work focuses on projects related to ephemeral architecture, domestic space, hospitality, education, and new ways of intervening in public spaces. Holding a PhD in Architecture since 2015, they have served as an associate professor at the E.T.S. de Arquitectura de Valladolid since 2012. As a researcher, their work focuses on exploring the residential and small-scale scope within the Scandinavian context.
For Conéntrico 04, they have designed a Finnish Sauna for the Ibero-American Institute of Finland and Visit Finland, which will occupy the courtyard of the Municipal Pilgrims' Hostel of Logroño.
The main idea for this project lay in the opportunity to shape a complex experience, as in the case of the original Finnish sauna, capable of engaging as many senses as possible. The sauna's most representative feature, its large picture window, serves to activate the sense of sight, capture the users' attention, and offer a unique, changing panorama. The sense of hearing—representing the Finnish preference for quiet and calm—is reflected in the silent environment fostered inside compared to the outside. Touch is engaged through the natural texture of Baltic spruce wood, highly characteristic of Finnish saunas, as well as objects like the “kauha” (ladle), the “kiulu” (bucket), etc., designed to be handled by hand and central to this experience.
In its resulting form and conceptualization, the design resembles a sort of original “periscope”—an instrument that, from a specific world (Finland, in this case), allows the observation of an entirely different one. It is easy to imagine a user immersed in a Finnish space and experience, gazing out from that framed viewpoint at a distant, surprising, and unfamiliar reality. Likewise, for passersby, the spontaneously appearing structure could be interpreted like a periscope emerging from the sea—a strange and improbable object that appears here today but could disappear at any moment, only to resurface in some other remote location.
Location: Courtyard of the Municipal Pilgrims' Hostel, Access via Travesía de Palacio.
This article was written by Javiera Barbosa. The translation is powered by AI.
