The Library Garden
The Library Garden is a civic garden conceived as a site for cultivation, seed exchange, and gathering. Commissioned for the 12th edition of Concéntrico, International Festival of Architecture and Design in Logroño, Spain, the project transformed a paved square beside the Biblioteca Rafael Azcona into a small garden of drought-resistant planting, organised around a timber shed and a shared table and benchs.
The work began with Design Your Own Community Garden, a workshop held during the 2025 festival on Calle San Roque. Local residents gathered around a communal table to imagine gardens that might nurture both people and urban wildlife, drawing biodiversity, edible plants, and small pockets of nature into the city. Their individual designs came together as a collective landscape, a shared vision for a greener, more connected Logroño.
The symbols, plants, and gestures present in those drawings travelled into The Library Garden itself. The flora, birds, bees, and fish imagined by participants were cut into the structure's facade, carrying their designs into the final work and weaving their stories into its form.
The work asks what it might mean to grow something together in public space. It draws on the spirit of the workshop, the exchange of seeds, of knowledge, of company, and proposes the city as a place where these practices can take root alongside everyday urban life. Sited beside the library, the garden extended its neighbour's logic of borrowing and sharing outdoors. A seed library invited visitors to take seeds and stories home with them, to be planted and spread across the town, continuing the cycle of growth and sharing beyond the festival.
Presented as part of Concéntrico's Urban Ecologies programme, the project sat within a wider curatorial enquiry into architecture, climate, materiality, and landscape in the contemporary city. The Library Garden was on view in Logroño from 18 to 23 June 2026.
With thanks to the British Council Spain for their generous and continued support of the project, and to Concéntrico for the invitation and ongoing trust.
Photography by Sara Cuerdo.
Photography by Sara Cuerdo.
Photography by Sara Cuerdo.
During the festival, The Library Garden was activated through a series of planting workshops held in collaboration with the Biblioteca Rafael Azcona. Local residents gathered to plant, tend, and exchange seeds, connecting the garden to urban biodiversity, environmental care, and everyday social life. The sessions continued the participatory spirit of the project, with neighbours taking an active role in shaping and caring for the space throughout the week.
Ceramic tiles made and designed by Sahra Hersi for The Library Garden. The sequence depicts a seed being planted, growing, and flourishing, a quiet symbolism of spreading ideas and learning as growth, mirrored in the library beside it. The tiles draw on the Spanish tradition of tiles as storytellers, another way of carrying a narrative into public space. Concéntrico 2026, Biblioteca Rafael Azcona, Logroño.
Design Your Own Community Garden Workshop, Concéntrico 2025
Held on Calle San Roque during the 2025 festival and supported by the British Council, Design Your Own Community Garden invited members of the public to imagine and draw their own community gardens around a large communal table. Participants of all ages and backgrounds were welcomed in to think about how gardens might support people and urban wildlife together, considering biodiversity, edible plants, and the small pockets of nature that can take root in a city.
The workshop was informal and open. Drawing tools were freely available, prompts were simple, and each person was invited to interpret the brief in their own way. At the close of the session, the individual designs came together to form a collective landscape, a shared vision for a greener, more connected Logroño.