An urban fountain becomes public space
A semi-circular fountain located in a traffic roundabout in downtown Logroño, Spain, has been transformed into an open-air bathhouse. Part of the 2025 Concéntrico Architecture and Design Festival, ‘Round About Baths’ borrows from the concept of 19th-century public baths. Built as a timber wall structure that fully encloses the water-filled basin, the project converts an isolated urban feature, surrounded by roads, into a space of intimate interaction through the medium of water. Once assigned a role as part of the city‘s infrastructure but largely overlooked, the site has been reactivated as a space of public significance.
Once a key element of public hygiene infrastructure for the working class in the 19th century, urban bathhouses have gradually disappeared, replaced by private, commercially driven wellness centers that reflect contemporary lifestyles. Round About Baths offers a place of rest within the city, equipped with changing rooms, a steam room, and cold-water basins. By revealing the latent potential of car-dominated urban systems, the installation calls attention to forgotten public spaces and reimagines how they might be used.
The bathhouse structure is composed of a timber grid frame covered with raw wooden panels. After the festival, these panels were repurposed elsewhere—but the fountain reverted to its prior state, once again losing function and returning to disuse. What remain are the memories of the bathhouse and new imaginings of what public space can become. The fountain, where water once flowed to bring people together, will fade again into urban oblivion—an absence shaped by presence.
Held each June, the Concéntrico Festival presents alternative approaches to the meaning and role of cities and public space. This year‘s edition explored four themes: ‘Food,’ ‘Climate,’ ‘Water,’ and ‘Social Processes and Social processes and rituals,’ offering 24 ways of engaging with the urban environment. As part of the ‘Water as landscape’ theme, Round About Baths demonstrates the role water can play as both material and meeting point in the urban landscape. Though the bath’s shimmering waters may have vanished like a mirage, the source of a new urban spring has been tapped—and it flows again.
Project: Round About Bath / Location: Concentrico 2025, Logroño, Spain / Architect: Leopold Banchini Architects / Completion: 2025 / Photograph: ©Sara Cuerdo (courtesy of the architect), ©Gregori Civera (courtesy of the architect), ©Josema Cutillas (courtesy of the Concéntrico 2025)
