IAAC’s Master in City & Technology (1 or 2-year program) is a unique program oriented towards redefining the analysis, planning, and design of twenty-first-century cities and beyond. The program offers expertise in the design of digitally enhanced, ecological and human-centered urban environments by intersecting the disciplines of urbanism and data science. Taking place in Barcelona, the capital of urbanism, the Master in City & Technology is training the professionals that city administrations, governments, industries, and communities need, to transform the urban environment in the era of big data.
Agricultural landscapes often disappear from visual and political attention during conflict, overshadowed by images of urban destruction. This project uses satellite imagery to examine agricultural land in Gaza, focusing on the Beit Hanoun belt as an intersection between destruction and food systems. Through vegetation indices and bombing crater detection, the study distinguishes seasonal agricultural cycles … Read more
Salt is an essential mineral for humans and animals alike. When consumed, it breaks down into sodium and chloride – elements vital to muscle and nerve function, fluid balance, and the regulation of blood pressure and pH levels. Because sodium is lost through sweat, both humans and animals must replenish it to maintain physiological stability; … Read more
DETECTING SAND MINING USING MULTI-TEMPORAL SATELLITE IMAGERY Introduction Sand is ubiquitous in the modern world. It is the second-most extracted material on Earth after water, driven principally by the global demand for concrete, infrastructure, and urban expansion. Estimates place global sand and gravel extraction at 40–50 billion tonnes per year, a scale that outstrips many … Read more
This proposal envisions an agent-based ecological simulation where human and non-human actors, farmers, water, soil, plants, fungi, and climate, interact within a shared bioregion defined by watersheds rather than political borders. Agricultural technicians serve as mediators between data and local knowledge. Agents are not merely data points but active participants in a living network, continuously … Read more
India’s solar ambition is written into its landscape. Since the launch of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission in 2010, the country has pursued one of the most aggressive renewable energy expansions in history —targeting 500GW of solar capacity by 2030. But the geography of that expansion follows a troubling logic. The regions chosen for … Read more
Case Study of Ecological Restoration, Human Presence and Design of Co-Existence Introduction Fish Tail Park is located in the center of Nanchang City, a historic city in southeastern China with approximately 6.6 million residents, has experienced rapid urban growth and high-tech industrial expansion along the Gan River. Is a large-scale ecological restoration project designed by … Read more
Oerliker Park in Zürich, Switzerland is not a natural forest that slowly emerged over time. It is a designed urban ecology: structured, calculated, and deliberately designed among buildings and former industrial sites. Even though the park may read as “natural” with its trees, parks like Oerliker are often designed primarily around human use. But parks … Read more
This project investigates Parc del Centre del Poblenou through the lens of Designing for More than Humans. The park, although permeable and vegetated, is spatially structured around human circulation and programmed activity. As a result, human occupation is continuous and dominant, while non-human life remains fragmented and residual. Through rule-based speculation, the project tests how … Read more
The Brooklyn Bridge Park is located along the Brooklyn waterfront of the East River, between DUMBO and Atlantic Avenue, and it spans about 85 acres (0.34 km²), stretching roughly 2 kilometers along the shoreline. That alone makes it one of New York City’s most significant post-industrial waterfront transformations. The park was developed in phases between 2008 … Read more
entrance image Started off in 1504 as a Renaissance-era fortification system, designed to resist cannon warfare. Over the years, it has undergone many reconstructions, with the latest turning it into a managed heritage park in the early 2000s (Planted rows of trees) . Ecology has played an important role in each of its eras, as … Read more
Urban space is conventionally conceptualized as an anthropocentric construct. However, non-human species continuously appropriate architectural surfaces, infrastructural voids, and vegetated fragments. Birds occupy ledges and canopy layers, insects colonize engineered soils, bats navigate nocturnal corridors along tree lines, and plants root within pavement fissures. These presences are not incidental; they reflect how spatial design either … Read more
This project explores how power operates spatially through counter-cartography and autoethnography in Poblenou, Barcelona. Combining observation, mapping, and self-tracking, the research examines how infrastructure, urban objects, rules, and rhythms shape behavior, movement, and perception. Benches, pedestrian streets, and smoking practices reveal how freedom, restriction, and permission are unevenly distributed. Findings show that movement is widely … Read more
Introduction “Poblenou” or “Poble nou”, means “new town” in Catalan. When we first arrived to Poblenou in Fall of 2025, it was difficult to see how this space in the city was “new.” While it didn’t appear to be as old as El Born, Raval, or Gràcia, in our outsider perspective it certainly did not … Read more
Scrap Metal, Migration and Urban Recycling To better understand people, we must understand the spaces they occupy – the city they navigate, the neighborhood they experience. Robert Park notes that the city is a man’s most consistent and on the whole, his most successful attempt to remake the world he lives in more after his … Read more
Cities are often described in terms of movement. We often tend to move through them in familiar loops – leaving home to catch the metro, commuting to work, coming back in the evening, running errands, going to appointments. Over time, these repeated paths shape how we think about urban space and can seem to define … Read more
