Backstage Fireplace
Sam Chermayeff Office
Plaza San Agustín
2025
The wall is carving out a section of public space and transforming it into a domestic space. It is a living room with a fireplace, place of familiarity and gathering in a busy street environment.
On the other side, the Backstage, is a mirror with light bulbs, providing the surface to look at oneself, fix one’s make up perhaps. Both sides are about the distinction, or lack thereof, between our public and privates lives.
Sam Chermayeff Office
Sam Chermayeff Office is a studio that firmly believes architecture has the power to transform and create experiences. With offices in Berlin and New York, their approach spans a wide range of projects, including multi-unit housing, institutional buildings, exhibitions, and furniture design. The multidisciplinary team, led by Sam Chermayeff and Barbara Polakova, is particularly interested in how we live, both individually and collectively. Their portfolio includes clients such as the Albanian state, FLOS, Knoll, Maharam, and several private groups.
Agenda
Tonic Tale
19 June 2025 – 9:30 PM
Plaza San Agustín
An evening celebration with Sam Chermayeff, curated by Amélia Brandão Costa, Joana Azevedo, Matteo Missaglia, and Rodrigo da Costa Lima, centered around the most desired object in La Rioja.
Tonic Tale proves that things are always better together, and that every tale reveals intimacy. A gathering to share stories, laughter, and toasts on a very special night.
La Cháchara de Morrete
21 June 2025 – 12:00 PM to 1:30 PM
Plaza San Agustín
La Cháchara de Morrete is an open conversation session that forms part of the official programme of Morrete Fest, the LGTBIQ+ cultural festival of La Rioja. This new initiative goes beyond the stage to create a space for reflection and dialogue around the core themes of the festival: activism, representation, visibility, and cultural spaces — all from a queer perspective.
The event will bring together members of this year’s Morrete Fest line-up, offering first-hand insight into their experiences as LGTBIQA+ artists in the music industry, while also reflecting on how dissident identities inhabit, transform, and reinterpret culture and public space.
Through this proposal, Morrete Fest also aims to build connections with other cultural initiatives and collective social practices in La Rioja, such as the Concéntrico Festival and the community radio station Hola Barrio, which will broadcast the talk live via its streaming platform.
Human Library
23 June 2025 – 12:00 PM to 2:00 PM
Plaza San Agustín
Logroño Intercultural presents a Human Library in Plaza San Agustín, set within an urban intervention that transforms the space into a living room with a fireplace — an environment of intimacy and closeness amidst the city’s everyday rhythm. This domestic setting becomes the ideal stage for encounters between strangers, inviting them to share life stories and personal experiences in one-on-one conversations.
The Human Library is an international movement that began in Copenhagen in 2000, with the aim of fostering dialogue, understanding, and acceptance through diversity. Instead of books, people volunteer as “human books” to be “read” through direct conversation. The activity provides a safe and respectful framework to address meaningful topics, challenging stereotypes, prejudices, and social stigma through personal knowledge and lived experience.
With the collaboration of
