Client: Shift
Date: 2026
Status: Completed
Program: a regenerative living system where architecture becomes a dynamic social organism.
Scope: Competition

The building integrates public space, ecological performance, and civic life, actively fostering biodiversity while strengthening connections between local communities and broader ecological networks. More than a building, it is an evolving ecosystem designed to grow, adapt, and give back.

Green public areas expand and inhabit the structure allowing visitors and locals to traverse the building from the ground floor Plaza to its “Observation Stage Summit”. Along this vertical journey, they engage in a creative dialogue with a range of hybrid indoor programs, including exhibition and cultural spaces, a hotel, restaurants, a convention center, and co-working areas.

Shared outdoor collaborative areas are continuously adapted, reused, and reprogrammed as new resources, needs, and opportunities emerge. By combining nature with social activity and interaction, the building is never static, it transforms and regenerates collectively, remaining deeply connected to its environment and surrounding communities.

The Living Landmark is selectively wrapped in a bio-receptive layer that supports the life and development of diverse species: plants, insects, and birds. Green species grow over a mix of greenhouse textiles and biodegradable nets, anchored to a lightweight structure of reclaimed steel and timber, forming a 3D surface where species can nest and thrive. This adaptive envelope not only creates urban habitats but also performs climatic functions, regulating temperature and responding to changing weather. The “Polinature Habitat” transforms the building into a living landscape, where architecture, ecology, and technology merge into a dynamic urban ecosystem.

The material strategy of the Living Landmark is rooted in Rotterdam’s context and prioritizes regional abundance: reclaimed steel from decommissioned North Sea oil platforms. Reused for both the primary structure and secondary elements, it significantly reduces embodied carbon emissions. The design is conceived for disassembly, enabling components to enter future lifecycles and return long-term value to the city.

Credits & Collaborators

Ecosistema Urbano: Belinda Tato, José Luis Vallejo, Marco Rizzetto, Elena Castillo, Jorge Izquierdo, Águeda Pérez, Francisco Téllez, Álvaro Mieres, Gabriel Gino, Jingyuan Huang

Fabrications: Eric Frijters, Eric Wesley, Yara Mahmoudyar, Fabio Martínez
Arup: Stuart Smith, Ana Versteeg

A project promoted by @shift.the.world

Client: Universidad de Málaga
Date: 2017 – ongoing
Status: Competition First Prize – Construction In Progress
Program: Landscape, Urban Design, Architecture, Public Space And Digital Layer
Scope: Concept Design, Design Development, Construction Documents And Construction Management
Surface: 17ac

Ecosistema Urbano, after being awarded a public tender promoted by the University of Malaga in 2016, has developed the Landscape Planning Project for the Louis Pasteur Boulevard and the main public spaces of the Teatinos University Campus. The project has a total surface area of 21 Ha (52 ac); the first phase, comprising a total surface area of 7 Ha (17 ac), started construction in December 2020.

The project, in line with the University of Malaga’s strategies, develops the concept for an open and innovative campus. In order to enhance the academic and social functions within public spaces, the design creates an attractive and comfortable natural environment; it also incorporates technology that allows for a new atmosphere of interaction between the physical and digital environments.

The Louis Pasteur Boulevard project regenerates a large and underused area that is surrounded by infrastructure. This area transforms into the main space of the university campus by combining new spatial and landscape features with highly articulated programmes that improve its climatic comfort and connectivity.

The design enables everyday university life activities — teaching, studying, meeting and reading—to take place in public spaces, all while providing a new green infrastructure for the city.

Four ways of rethinking a campus

Using four different strategies, the boulevard includes different aspects of the campus with a single design:

• Connected Campus: This strategy creates a complete urban layout, through connecting different facilities and opening the university not only to its immediate surroundings, but also to the whole city, focusing primarily on public transportation and pedestrian areas.
  
• Green Campus: Creates an ecological route that, through a global strategy of sustainable management, recovers space and enhances the potential of existing green spaces such as the Olivar —Olive Grove— or the Botanical Garden.
  
• Interactive Campus: Allows users to visualize real-time information, interact with the different elements of the public space and adapt them according to their needs. Strategies include the configuration of the bioclimatic conditioning systems to achieve optimal environmental conditions.
  
• Open Campus: Makes a wide variety of educational meeting spaces and devices available for university students and all citizens, bringing academic activity into the public space and  making it more accessible and dynamic.

Digital interactivity and bioclimatic comfort

One of the key aspects of this project is its commitment to using technology as a way of improving the interaction between people and the environment.

Malaga University Campus is the first public space that users can control through an application. In parallel with the construction of the project, the official UMA app was extended with open source modules that allow access to an augmented environment of interactivity and information. 

This opens up a whole new world of connections between the digital layer and the physical space. Beyond the typical optimization and automation processes that are common in a ‘smart cities’ approach, this project utilizes a network of sensors and actuators that allow individuals to experience a new level of interactivity: from controlling bioclimatic conditioning systems, changing lighting settings, sending audiovisual content to screens and sound systems, to knowing the atmospheric conditions of the spaces in each area of the park or events programmed, sharing comments or photos associated with specific spaces, unlocking lockers to access extra equipment and even checking out books from an outdoor extension of the university library.

Technology also plays a key role in the environmental conditions of this project. To improve the comfort of the main outdoor spaces, they have been equipped with bioclimatic conditioning systems such as evaporative cooling or geothermal air circulation. All these devices have a low level of energy consumption and are powered by solar panels integrated into the newly built structures. These systems, together with the passive bioclimatic strategies widely implemented in the design, foster a continuous use of the space throughout the year.

Open academic spaces connected by a natural landscape

The first construction phase, which covers an area of 7 Ha (17 ac), is articulated around three main systems: the “Hubs” or activity nodes, the large green area and the boulevard, a green corridor that connects the former two systems.

This project is also designed to manage the circulation of water in a more sustainable and efficient way, by slowing its runoff, creating a network of infiltration areas and planting species with low water consumption.

The Boulevard is a green corridor that connects programmatic elements such as the technological “Hubs,” open classrooms or spaces for social encounter, with the formerly neglected natural spaces that have been transformed into urban biodiversity reserves. 

The main path is protected from traffic by artificial topographies covered with vegetation, creating landscapes that bring character to the emptiness of the suburban environment. These new landscapes enclose and protect spaces, making bioclimatic conditioning achievable at the Teatinos Campus.

The Climatic and Digital Hub is the main space, located next to the Metro station and is designed for large-capacity events. It is equipped with a technological canopy that houses an interactive screen, a digital water curtain, climate conditioning systems and energy production systems that provide power for the entire park.

The Open Classrooms are spaces that are surrounded and protected by vegetation and are equipped with interactive technologies that enable academic and social events. The open classrooms transfer the university experience into the public space.

The Open Library at the Olive Grove is a natural environment equipped with light infrastructure and urban furniture elements that transform the grove into a space for creativity, leisure, learning, reading, exchanging information and resting.

Along with water collection systems and infiltration areas, vegetation along the Stream cleans and re-naturalizes the stream, limits soil erosion, allows for resources to be managed efficiently and enhances biodiversity.

Combining this strategic approach with site-specific interventions, the new Campus of Teatinos adopts a vision where public space and landscape can support playful and educational experiences, making interdisciplinary knowledge accessible not only to students, but to all citizens.

A connected, open, interactive and green campus.
An intelligent natural space that combines positive energy balance with bioclimatic comfort.
A public space where collaboration, creativity and learning define the urban scene.

Client: Municipality of Madrid,
Date: 2004-2007
Status: Built
Program: Ecological Boulevard for a social and bioclimatically conditioned public space.
Area: 550x50m,
Scope: Design, construction document, Energy strategy, and construction follow up

Co-funded by the European Union (LIFE-2002 (ENV/E/000198)) and the EMVS.

The Eco-boulevard in Vallecas can be defined as an urban recycling operation consisting of the following actions: insertion of an air tree-social dynamizer over an existing urbanization area, densification of existing alignment trees and reduction and asymmetric arrangement of wheeled traffic circulation. Superficial interventions reconfiguring the existing urbanization (perforations, fillings, paint, etc.) that defaces the executed kerb development.

There are two main objectives: one of a social nature aimed to generate activity, and one of an environmental nature, the bioclimatic adaptation of outdoor space, achieved with a system of passive air conditioning based on chilling by evapotranspiration.

This system, commonly used in the green house industry, is capable of lowering temperature by around 10º C, depending on humidity conditions and temperature. The system goes into action when a temperature sensor detects temperatures above 27ºC in its surroundings. It is particularly effective with high temperatures and low relative humidity (typical conditions in Madrid during the summer).

The Air Trees are objects of an exportable nature, so they may be re-installed in similar locations or in other types of situations requiring an urban activity or reactivation.

Client: Municipality of Dordrecht
Date: 2010 – 2012
Status: Built
Program: Unconventional play object
Scope: Concept design, design development and construction document

Ecosistema Urbano’s “Energy carousel” is an inventive, educative and multi-age friendly playful object. A play structure consisting of a tensegrity structure formed with ropes and textiles. The kinetic energy that is released by the children’s movement is stored in a battery and supplied after to light up the structure.

Ecosistema Urbano has designed this play structure with two particular focuses in mind. The first is to promote education through play. We believe that teaching children about alternative methods for generating electrical power with their own physical experiences, sends a subtle message about the potential for creative and a more sustainable approach to urbanism.

Second, is to use efficient materials that also serve to highlight the project’s unique design. The kinetic energy released by the children’s hanging and turning on the ropes is captured via carousel structure and stored in a battery underneath the play site. This energy is used to generate the lighting in the evenings. The mechanism of energy production and lightning is so simple as a bike dynamo. The color of the lights also changes according to how much energy has been generated by the children on any particular day.

Client: Fundación Madrid Global
Date: 2009 – 2010
Status: Built
Program: Public Space and outdoor pavilion for the City of Madrid during the 2010 Shanghai Expo
Scope: Design, construction document, energy strategy and construction management

The Air Tree emerges as an experimental prototype of intervention in contemporary urban public space, capable of reactivating sites and creating the conditions to empower the use of the collective space. It is conceived as a technological urban furniture, which also serves as a virtual node of connectivity Madrid-Shanghai, where users can actively interact.

Its different technical layers enables multiple final configurations and a myriad of intermediate positions (opaque, translucent, transparent, bright, interactive, open, etc.). Different textiles for video projections allow an unlimited combination of scenarios adaptable to citizen needs. Its appearance can be transformed over the daily cycle, as well as through the different seasons. By sensors it is connected in real-time with the climatic conditions of Shanghai, constantly adopting the optimal physical and energy consumption configuration to generate climatic comfort for the citizens.

A 7.3 m diameter fan suspended by a tensegrity structure in the center of the space, at a height of 11.5 m provides air flows inside the space. Through a telescopic system the fan can be lowered several meters to come closer to the ground. The exact position and speed at each moment is determined according to the instant climatic conditions of the environment, real time monitored in the surroundings of the structure.

The project’s construction plans and specifications were published under a Creative Commons license, making this project one of the first “open source” contemporary architectural designs.

Client: Hamar Kommune
Date: 2011 – 2013
Status: Built
Program: Participation process and design development of the main square of Hamar
Scope: Concept, participatory process and urban design

Dreamhamar is a participation and network design process aimed to redesign the public space of Stortorget Square in Hamar, Norway. During 2011-2012, citizens took part in a collective brainstorming process that would define their new square. It’s a pioneer approach to the construction of new public spaces or transformation of existing ones, supported by workshops, lectures, urban actions, communication and participation tools.The project involves various stakeholders that became part of the community of Dreamhamar and participated in some of the seven working areas: urban design, physical lab, onsite workshops, urban actions, digital lab, academic network and cultural rucksack.

URBAN DESIGN, a technical research and urban approach to the public space.

PHYSICAL LAB, a “pop up office” where workshops, lectures, and exhibitions take place.

ONSITE WORKSHOPS, workshops, and lectures led by local and international creative guests to create a large database of the citizen ideas.

URBAN ACTIONS, a way for citizens to experience directly in the public space possible uses of the future square. Mock ups scale 1/1

DIGITAL LAB, participatory web platform linked to social network channels, to follow the weekly broadcasts, online workshops and use the mobile application, dreamhamar.app.

ACADEMIC NETWORK, Dreamhamar as the course case study for universities linked to this global participative brainstorming.

CULTURAL RUCKSACK, students from local schools share their ideas for Stortorget.

photo credits: Christoffer Horsfjord Nilsen

Client: Municipality of Rivas Vaciamadrid
Date: 2009 – 2010
Status: Built
Program: Ecological reconfiguration of a former industrial site into a kindergarten and new public space
Scope: Design, strategy, construction document and construction management

Ecópolis Plaza is conceived as a source of learning for citizens, educating on energy saving and optimization of natural resources. The project integrates ecology in everyday life, without turning it into an exceptional phenomenon more akin to a theme park or museum. In this project, the architecture is challenged beyond formal experimentation, to transform a vacant lot in the outskirts of Madrid into a space for social interaction.

Ecópolis Plaza brings together on the same site a kindergarten, a ludic space for kids, and a public space. The solution combines passive energy saving systems together with active systems, providing the highest eco-label (A grade) of Spanish law.

In addition all the waste water from the building is naturally purified by a macrophyte lagoon incorporated in the public space. This recycled water is stored under the ground within a gravel tank and then used for all the irrigation needs of the garden. This artificial landscape emulates a natural riverbank. The surrounding topography creates an enclosure and buffer area protecting the building and users from the aggressive industrial environment. Plaza Ecopolis has received several awards among which is a Best Practice from the United Nations Habitat program.