Dr Marcos Cruz is an Architect and Professor of Innovative Environments at the Bartlett, UCL. Cruz’s research and teaching (UCL, IaaC, University Westminster, UCLA) has been focused for over 20 years on new forms of bio-integrated and sustainable design for the built environment with main focus on bioreceptive materials, poikilohydric design and neoplasmatic architecture (RIBA President’s award for research in 2008). Cruz published numerous books and articles, lectured and exhibited internationally, and regularly serves on juries and advisory boards. In addition to his academic leadership, Cruz was principal of the award-winning practice MAM/marcosandmarjan, London, and now runs Studio Biocene with his cofounder, Dr Brenda Parker. Parker is an Associate Professor of Sustainable Bioprocess Design at the Department of Biochemical Engineering, UCL. Her research and teaching are highly interdisciplinary, bringing together the fields of environmental biotechnology, sustainability and design for applications within the built environment. Brenda holds an MEng and PhD in Biochemical Engineering. Her postdoctoral research was conducted as part of the Algal Biotechnology Consortium at the University of Cambridge, and she has worked on biomanufacturing and bioremediation using photosynthetic organisms for over 15 years.

Our planet is in disequilibrium. Humans have disrupted biogeochemical processes mediated by plants and microorganisms by exploiting our resources: atmosphere, soils, and water. Studio Biocene embraces transdisciplinary practices to create a built environment closely intertwined with nature. The unique approach combines architecture, biology, ecology, environmental biotechnology and computation to pave the way for a future that actively helps our planet regain its balance. Moving beyond nature-based solutions, they envision the bio-integrated solutions for a green transition into the Biocene, which address fundamental questions about inhabitation, materiality and biodiversity, through implementation of new biodesign, biofabrication and biotechnology processes. The Biocene serves as both the vision and the goal for a more sustainable world.

Prof. Christiane M. Herr is a PhD supervisor as well as the person responsible for education and the director of the BEng Industrial Design program at the School of Design, Southern University of Science and Technology. With a background in architecture and engineering, Christiane focuses on the areas of cross-disciplinary ecological design, advanced façade technologies and digitally supported design. Across Asia, urban populations are concentrating in dense megacities where high-rise buildings dominate urban form and most urban residents have little exposure to nature throughout their lives. This has negative implications for the health and well-being of both human and non-human life. From a design perspective, new forms of living together are needed that require re-conceptualization of urban ecosystems and the role buildings can play in them. Led by Prof. Christiane M. Herr, the Future Ecologies Group at SUSTech engages in cross-disciplinary research that integrates empirical science, technology and design to support the development of future high-density cities in subtropical climates. The talk discusses the question of how high-rise buildings can host both humans and functioning ecosystems.

Professor Christoph Rupprecht researches sustainability and cities from the perspectives of multispecies studies, degrowth, green space, food and agriculture. He’s particularly interested in the role of stories, games and the imagination in rethinking social structures and institutions through a more-than-human lens. Recent work includes the science fiction anthologies “Multispecies Cities” and “Solarpunk Creatures”, a proposal for “Sustainable agrifood systems for a post-growth world” in Nature Sustainability, and efforts to create a living-lab multispecies campus. Since 2021, Christoph leads the Multispecies Sustainability Laboratory at the Department of Environmental Design as an Associate Professor at Ehime University, Japan. He’s also a founding director at the FEAST NPO.

Sustainability as a concept is focused on human wellbeing. This utilitarian view of nature as a resource for humanity limits sustainability’s conceptual power and hampers real-world transformation efforts. Multispecies sustainability proposes a broader definition that acknowledges the interdependent needs of multiple species’ current and future generations. Following a closer look at the emergence of relational thinking across disciplines, the talk will discuss what principles underpin this redefinition of sustainability. It will conclude by exploring promising avenues for future research and potential applications, from urban design to art and fiction.

Professor Leonie Fischer leads the Institute of Landscape Planning and Ecology at the University of Stuttgart. Her scientific focus is especially on the ecology of human-influenced habitats in both tropical and moderate regions, including urban ecology and urban restoration. She also works on a deeper understanding of how people value urban nature, and what influences their attitudes. The basic part of her research work is its practical orientation and application.

In the talk, she will describe current approaches in urban planning, spanning from ecological restoration to urban design. Thus, different spatial levels of greening approaches and various types of green spaces and green elements will be assessed for their potential to create safe and healthy environments for everyone. The main argument will be to untangle how people use and value urban nature, and how a mosaic of green structures helps mitigate climate change and biodiversity loss in cities.

Dr. Fahim Amir is a philosopher and lives in Vienna. Amir’s research focuses on cultures of nature and urbanism, perspectives of cohabitation and transculturality, and questions of architecture and space. Amir was co-editor of Transcultural Modernisms in 2013 and wrote the afterword to the German translation of Donna Haraway’s Companion Species Manifesto. His study Schwein und Zeit (Being and Swine) has been listed on the Sachbuchbestenliste of Deutschlandfunk Kultur, ZDF and Die Zeit and was chosen as one of the best books of 2019 by the Goethe-Institut and the Frankfurt Book Fair. It has been translated amongst others into English (2020), Persian (2021) and French (2022). Recent publications include the manifesto of the arch+ exhibition Cohabitation in Berlin (2021) and contributions for the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles, 2022), the 58th Carnegie International Exhibition (Pittsburgh, 2022), Mumok – Museum moderner Kunst (Vienna, 2022) and Venice Biennale Architettura (2023).

In his lecture, Fahim Amir introduces the philosophies of cohabitation by analyzing the prevailing architectural discourse and the dispositives of contemporary urban planning with regard to their anthropocentric constitution and develops possible perspectives of solidaristic design. These inevitably also intervene in the orders of the aesthetic and political. Thus, making the claims of non-human others part of the equation means, not least, relativizing our sovereignty. After all, participation (Teilhabe) also means sharing (Teilgabe), so we will have to give up something, e.g. the idea of a completely controllable and “manageable” environment. Stray animals, urban pigeons and their entanglements may today be as valid as models as the seemingly eternal squares and circles of Vitruvian Man.

Monika Egerer researches the ecology and management of ecosystems in and around cities. She takes an interdisciplinary research approach, analyzing the relationships among biodiversity, ecosystem services, and human wellbeing. A particular focus is on the role of insects and plant biodiversity in urban agricultural systems, especially in the context of habitat management, urbanization and climate change. She holds a PhD in environmental studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz, USA. In 2020, she was appointed to the professorship of Urban Productive Ecosystems at the TUM School of Life Sciences.

Increasing urban densification can negatively impact urban biodiversity, but the diversity of urban green spaces also offers new opportunities to promote biodiversity conservation. Urban community gardens are social-ecological systems that support biodiversity, ecosystem services, and interactions between people and nature. Community gardens, in turn, can be an ideal living laboratory to work with gardener to develop, test, and implement biodiversity conservation strategies that can be transferred and disseminated to other urban ecosystems. However, the impact of biodiversity-friendly garden strategies has not yet been systematically researched, nor how this knowledge can be transferred to other urban ecosystems. Monika Egerer will talk about the research they are developing, to implement and test insect conservation measures with community gardeners in Munich and Berlin as well as with city residents.  They work at the interface between civil society (gardeners, residents, ecologically oriented organizations) and relevant urban stakeholders (city council, district committees, city administration, business, academia) to anchor civil society participation in the ecological transformation of the city. She will present their transdisciplinary research concept and participatory methods and will report on their experience to date in translating research into practice and supporting the role of urban gardeners and residents in implementing biodiversity measures beyond the garden.