MONDAY - SEPTEMBER 28, 2026
4:00 - 5:00PM
Market Station (1661 Market St, Denver, CO 80202)
Free to open to the public
Javier Peña Ibáñez, architect, curator, and founder of Concéntrico, will present a lecture exploring how architecture, design, and culture can serve as catalysts for more inclusive, resilient, and imaginative cities. Drawing on the work of Concéntrico—an internationally recognized platform based in Logroño, Spain—Peña Ibáñez will examine how temporary interventions, public installations, exhibitions, and collaborative research transform streets, plazas, and everyday urban spaces into laboratories for civic experimentation. Through projects developed with designers, artists, architects, municipalities, and local communities, the lecture will highlight how small-scale interventions can generate lasting conversations about public life. By sharing the processes behind Concéntrico's internationally acclaimed initiatives, Peña Ibáñez will offer insights into innovative models of urban engagement and cultural production that challenge conventional approaches to city-making. The lecture invites students, designers, and the broader public to rethink public space as a dynamic platform for creativity, collaboration, and social innovation.
About the speaker:
Javier Peña Ibáñez is an architect, curator, and educator. He is the founder and director of Concéntrico, an international platform that explores new relationships between architecture, design, and public space through temporary interventions, exhibitions, encounters, and research.
From 2022 to 2025, he served as the artistic director of the TAC! Urban Architecture Festival, promoted by the Spanish Ministry of Housing and Urban Agenda and the Arquia Foundation. He is the curator of the Public Design Commissions program for Design Doha 2026 and co-editor of Concéntrico: Urban Innovation Laboratory, published by Park Books.
His practice focuses on architecture and cultural innovation, with a particular interest in temporary design as a tool for transforming collective space, fostering participation, and testing alternative ways of inhabiting cities. Through his curatorial and educational work, he brings together international practitioners, institutions, and local communities to explore how design can create more open, inclusive, and responsive urban environments.
About the curator:
Leyuan Li is an assistant professor of architecture at the University of Colorado Denver and a visiting assistant professor of architecture at the Princeton University School of Architecture. He is a recipient of the Art Omi Architecture Fellowship and the MacDowell Fellowship. His research and creative work examine the agency of the interior as an infrastructure of care to address injustices embedded in urban landscapes. Together with his design practice, Office for Roundtable, he designs architectural projects and public installations that explore the ecological, political, and social dimensions of contemporary living crises. His work has been featured in various design platforms, including Fundación Arquia, New Generations, Dezeen, ArchDaily, PLOT, The Architect's Newspaper, and New York Review of Architecture, and exhibited internationally at venues including the History Colorado Center in Denver, La Casa de la Arquitectura in Madrid, the Bi-City Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism in Shenzhen, the São Paulo International Architecture Biennale, and the Timișoara Architecture Biennale.
RSVP