ISMAT stands out at Barcelona Design Week with the COCOON project and debates the future of biodesign
On 15 and 16 October 2025, the Instituto Superior Manuel Teixeira Gomes (ISMAT), as the coordinating institution of the European project COCOON – Co-Designing with Nature (Erasmus+ Forward-Looking), took part in the international conference “Biodesign for Living Futures”, integrated into Barcelona Design Week and organised by the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC). The event brought together some of the most influential researchers and creators at the forefront of biodesign and living architecture, exploring how design can become a co-evolutionary practice between humans and nature.
In the opening session, Américo Mateus, coordinator of the COCOON project and professor at ISMAT, set the tone for the meeting with his intervention “The Call for a New Design”, arguing that “there are moments in history when design must stop producing and start listening”. His message highlighted COCOON as a living process of ecological learning, in which design no longer treats nature as a backdrop but recognises it as co-author, co-thinker, and co-learner. Through the Co-Naturering model, he proposed a regenerative pedagogy based on four stages — Co-Sensing, Co-Growing, Co-Evolving and Co-Flourishing — which guide the creation of bio-modules, bio-labs, and life-centred educational methodologies.
The first day also featured contributions from a remarkable international panel: Rachel Armstrong (KU Leuven) presented advances in regenerative architecture and biohybrid materials; Richard Beckett (UCL Bartlett) discussed Probiotic Design and the integration of microbial ecologies into buildings; Aldo Sollazzo (IAAC) addressed the convergence of robotics, digital fabrication, and industrial sustainability; Martin Tamke (CITA Copenhagen) revealed new relationships between computational design and intelligent materials; Roberta Salierno (Politecnico di Milano) reflected on the scalability of biological materials in construction; and Nancy Diniz, Andreas Theodoridis, Thora Arnardottir, and Chiara Farinea completed the panel, underlining the pedagogical, scientific, and urban dimensions of contemporary biodesign.
The second day was dedicated to the presentation and discussion of 30 peer-reviewed scientific papers addressing the main themes of the event: Bio-Design, Nature-Based Solutions, Ecological Monitoring, Biodiversity, Bio-Inspired Innovation, Bio-Fabrication, Circularity, Bio-Economy, and Theories of Design with Life. These contributions reflected the richness and diversity of emerging approaches that are redefining the role of design in ecological and social regeneration. The conference consolidated COCOON and ISMAT as European references in transforming design education into living ecologies of knowledge, creativity, and sustainability — where laboratories become gardens, and education returns to being a space where humans and nature learn to flourish together.
