Architecture in the international context

Acción Cultural Española Talks

Logroño City Council
Installation by Lanza Atelier
3rd September – 19.30h

Concéntrico 07 deepens the relationship with Acción Cultural Española, an institution that has participated in the festival since 2016. Thanks to this new framework, different leading international entities in the field of architecture are invited to the festival to share their vision of the sector and establish a direct dialogue with the knowledge produced in Spain. The Logroño meeting will be attended by:

Manuel Henriques y Carolina Vicente / Trienal de Lisboa
Iker Gil / MAS Context
Florian Strob / Bauhaus Dessau Foundation
José Esparza Chong Cuy / Storefront for Art and Architecture
Pihla Meskanen / Arkki

The Talk takes place in a format of open conversation with the public on 3 September in the installation1973- 2021 by Lanza Atelier at Logroño Town Hall.

This cycle with Acción Cultural Española is completed with the programming of two digital Encounters associated with Mextropoli (14 September) and MAS Context, with the Chicago Architecture Biennial and Exhibit Columbus (21 September); and the online activities to be carried out by Plataforma Arquitectura / Archdaily.

Florian Strob is a curator in the fields of architecture, literature and contemporary art. He holds a B.Sc. in Architecture from the Technical University in Berlin and a PhD in Medieval and Modern Languages from the University of Oxford. He works at the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, where he curated the new exhibition of the Bauhaus Building and the Masters’ Houses and the international conference Collecting Bauhaus (both for the Bauhaus Centenary in 2019).

He is the head of project and curator of the Bauhaus Residency Program, which invites artists, architects, designers and writers to live, work and exhibit in the historic Masters’ Houses in Dessau.

His current research interests focus on the interfaces between philology and architecture. He is the head of the research project “Bauhaus im Text”, providing among other things a first comprehensive overview of the textual heritage of the Bauhaus. Forthcoming is a new critical edition of Ludwig Hilberseimer’s seminal 1944 “The New City” (2022) as well as the international conference “Hilberseimer – Infrastructures of Modernity” (October 2021).

He has published numerous books and articles on modern architecture and literature.

José Esparza Chong Cuy is a curator, writer, and architect from Mexico currently serving as the Executive Director and Chief Curator at Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York. His work explores the nuances of public life with an aim of fostering equitable spaces of learning and exchange through institutional practices. Prior to Storefront, he worked as the Pamela Alper Associate Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, where he organized solo exhibitions of artists Jonathas de Andrade and Tania Pérez Córdova, as well as a major new commission by Federico Herrero. He is also co-curator major traveling retrospective of Lina Bo Bardi co-organized between the MCA, the Museu de arte de São Paulo (MASP), and the Museo Jumex in Mexico City. Prior to the MCA, Esparza Chong Cuy was Associate Curator at the Museo Jumex. Between 2007-2012 he lived in New York and held positions as Curatorial Associate at Storefront for Art and Architecture, Research Fellow at the New Museum, and contributing editor at Domus magazine. In 2013 he was Co-Curator of the Lisbon Architecture Triennial, titled Close, Closer. He is a graduate of Columbia University’s M.S. in Critical, Curatorial, and Conceptual Practices in Architecture.

Iker Gil is the director and founder of MAS Studio, a Chicago-based architecture and urban design firm. He is also the executive director of the SOM Foundation, the editor-in-chief of the design publication MAS Context, and the editor of the book Shanghai Transforming (ACTAR, 2008). Iker was the associate curator of the US pavilion for the sixteenth Venice Architecture Biennale held in 2018.

He has curated several exhibitions, including Nocturnal Landscapes: Urban Flows of Global Metropolises and BOLD: Alternative Scenarios for Chicago as part of the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial. In addition, Iker teaches architectural projects in the Department of Architecture, Interior, and Industrial Design (AIADO) at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). Iker has received multiple awards and grants for his work, including the Emerging Visions Award from the Chicago Architectural Club, grants from the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the Ruy de Clavijo grant from Casa Asia, and the PICE grant from AC/E (Acción Cultural Española).

Pihla Meskanen is an architect and educator, co-founder of Arkki and executive director of Arkki International. Arkki offers creative education using architecture and design as holistic, real-world phenomena for civic and cultural literacy.

Meskanen envisions creative education through architecture that provides children with new skills, means and tools to influence the sustainable creation of our future environment, no matter what their occupation.

He has written several books and articles and has participated in the drafting of the Finnish National Curriculum for Visual Arts and Architecture. He was awarded the honour of Knight First Class of the Order of the Lion of Finland by the President in 2018 for his work in the field of creative education. Meskanen has also received the Asko-Avonius Prize, the Pietilä State Prize for children’s culture and was elected Art Educator of the Year in 2013.

Manuel Henriques is an architect. Executive Director of the Lisbon Architecture Triennale since September 2011. He was a consultant for Architecture and Design at the Directorate General of the Arts (Ministry of Culture – Portugal) from 2003 to 2011, having coordinated the official Portuguese representations at the Venice and São Paulo Architecture Biennials.

He has collaborated with Inês Lobo Architects in Portugal and Diener & Diener Architekten in Basel. Worked for Experimentadesign in 2001-2003. Co-curated and produced two exhibitions of contemporary Portuguese art in San Francisco, while co-directing ZDB Gallery – Lisbon. Occasionally works in other creative and production fields, collaborating with architects, artists, filmmakers and performers, as an active agent on stage or backstage.

Carolina Vicente is Master in Cultural Management from ISCTE Business School and Master in Architecture from the University of Lisbon – Faculty of Architecture. She started her career in the cultural field as curatorial assistant at the Centro de Arte Contemporânea: Carpe Diem Arte e Pesquisa, where she was also responsible for the development of fundraising strategies and the management of the Collection of limited editions.

In 2016 she joined the team of product designer Emmanuel Babled where she was responsible for all logistics and back office management. That same year, she was invited by the Lisbon Architecture Triennale to produce one of the main exhibitions of its 4th edition and, since 2017, she is part of the executive team as producer and responsible for Open House Lisbon.