Resonancia by PPAA is a temporary public-space intervention in Plaza del Ayuntamiento in Logroño, Spain, where a lightweight aluminum lattice extends the geometric order of Rafael Moneo’s City Hall into the square. Rather than occupying the plaza as an autonomous object, the project treats the existing urban void as an active spatial field shaped by alignment, reflection, movement, and public use.
Resonancia Technical Information
- ArchitectsPPAA
- LocationPlaza del Ayuntamiento, Logroño, Spain
- Project Years2026
- Photographs© Josema Cutillas
The project begins by working with what already exists. Instead of filling the plaza with a new architectural object, the intervention treats the void as its primary material.
– PPAA
Reading the Plaza as an Active Void
Resonancia is situated in front of Logrono City Hall, designed by Rafael Moneo between 1973 and 1981. The municipal building is not conceived as a detached civic object, but as an urban fragment that frames and gives measure to the plaza before it. Its two elongated wings meet at an obtuse angle, producing a courtyard-like public void that belongs as much to the building as to the city.
PPAA’s intervention begins with this condition. The plaza is not treated as an empty surface awaiting occupation, but as a spatial construction already defined by architectural edges, paving joints, tree lines, and patterns of public movement. The decision to intervene without introducing a closed figure is significant: the work depends on the latent order of the site rather than on formal autonomy.
The result is a project that intensifies the square while leaving much of it open. Its presence is registered through changing lines of sight, altered walking routes, and the proximity between bodies and thin vertical elements. Public space is framed as an active void, where architectural effect emerges through perception and use rather than through enclosed mass.
Extending Moneo’s Geometry into Public Space
The intervention derives its logic from the alignments and rhythms of City Hall. Moneo’s limestone facades, vertical window grid, and deep ground-floor portico establish a precise architectural order, while the slender white columns beneath the cantilever form a measured threshold between building and plaza. PPAA projects this order outward, translating the building’s geometry into a field of points and lines across the granite paving.
This projected grid does not impose a new diagram on the square. Instead, it makes visible a structure already present in the relationship between facade, portico, paving, and urban frame. The aluminum elements sit in close correspondence with existing joint lines in the stone surface, turning an often overlooked constructional detail into part of the spatial argument.
The built field occupies a triangular portion of the plaza, springing from the inner angle of the two municipal wings and extending toward the open side of the square. This partial occupation is central to the project. The intervention establishes a zone of orientation and encounter without neutralizing the larger emptiness of the plaza, allowing civic space to remain legible beyond the temporary work.
A Lightweight Lattice of Movement and Perception
The lattice is assembled from mill-finish aluminum box profiles arranged as open L-shaped or staple-like modules. Each unit consists of two vertical members of unequal height joined at the base by a horizontal element resting on the paving. Rotated and mirrored across the field, these modules generate a loose chevron pattern whose density varies across the installation.
Because the elements are open rather than framed as complete rectangles, the field remains permeable. Visitors can pass through, pause within, or look across it without encountering a hard boundary. Taller members approach the scale of a small architectural frame, while lower pieces register closer to furniture or drawing. This variation creates zones of compression and release, shifting the plaza from a continuous open plane into a sequence of perceptual intervals.
The strongest spatial reading occurs from beneath the existing portico. From this position, Moneo’s slender white columns and PPAA’s aluminum verticals interleave visually, making it difficult at first glance to separate permanent architecture from temporary intervention. The project gains its force from this ambiguity. It does not mimic City Hall, but extends its cadence into the public realm with a reduced and reversible syntax.
Material Lightness, Reversibility, and Urban Temporality
The aluminum profiles give the intervention a fluctuating presence. Under overcast skies, the satin surface approaches the tonal value of the clouds and appears to dissolve into the background. In strong sun, the same elements become sharp silver lines, projecting long shadows across the granite. These shadows act almost as a second drawing, doubling the grid on the plaza floor and making time of day part of the spatial reading.
The construction system reinforces the work’s temporary character. The modules are dry-assembled and self-supporting, with visible bolted connections at the foot of each upright and no anchoring into the paving. This detail is not merely technical. It defines the ethical limit of the intervention, allowing the plaza to be transformed without permanent alteration to its surface or to Moneo’s urban composition.
By relying on modular components that can be dismantled, reused, reconfigured, or recycled, Resonancia addresses temporality without treating the installation as disposable. Its architectural value lies less in the endurance of a fixed object than in the relationships it sets in motion: between building and plaza, structure and shadow, visitor and field, permanence and event.
About PPAA
PPAA, Perez Palacios Arquitectos Asociados, is a Mexico City-based architecture practice led by Pablo Perez Palacios. In Resonancia, the studio works with the existing urban void of Plaza del Ayuntamiento, using a lightweight, reversible aluminum lattice to extend latent site geometries and allow architecture to emerge through relationships rather than mass.
Credits and Additional Notes
- PPAA project team: Pablo Pérez Palacios, Emilio Calvo, Patricio Rugarcia, Alejandra Pinto, Lorena Águila, Adolfo Quiroz
- Other contributors: Photography by Josema Cutillas
- Existing building context: Logrono City Hall, designed by Rafael Moneo
