The Master in City & Technology’s academic structure is based on IAAC’s innovative, learn-by-doing and design-through-research methodology which focuses on the development of interdisciplinary skills. During the Master in City & Technology students will have the opportunity to be part of a highly international group, including faculty members, researchers, and lecturers, in which they are encouraged to develop collective decision-making processes and materialize their project ideas.
Mukuru, one of Nairobi’s largest informal settlements, is home to 400,000 residents drawn by industrial employment rather than choice of place. This transience produces a paradox: extraordinary urban density alongside persistent spatial neglect and displacement risk. The Right to Belong constructs a six-layer vulnerability framework — combining satellite data, street-level computer vision, mobility mapping, and … Read more
Children’s journey to school, in Bosa Apogeo, Colombia INTRO Bogotá’s growth over the last two decades has been dramatic. The metropolitan area now holds close to 11.8 million inhabitants — a 51% increase in just 15 years. That growth has not been evenly distributed across the city. The city currently ranks 7th in the world … Read more
Trinitat Nova, Trinitat Vella and La Trinitat are three neighbourhoods in Barcelona separated by 600 metres and divided by decades of infrastructure built for the city rather than for the people who live in it.** Ronda de Dalt — a six-lane open-cut highway — severs ecological continuity, buries the 10th-century Rec Comtal waterway beneath concrete, … Read more
A Community Board Game for Mukuru, Nairobi Jumuiya means “community” in Swahili. My Jumuiya is a participatory board game in which 3 to 6 players each embody a different resident of Mukuru, Nairobi — a mother, a factory worker, a doctor, a kid, a teacher, a university student, a market seller, or a person with … Read more
En La Calle is a board game for 2–4 players aged 8 and above, set in the streets of Bosa-Apogeo, Bogotá — a neighbourhood home to some of the highest school density in the city and the largest school in Bogotá by enrolled students, yet streets that were never designed with children in mind. En … Read more
A Bee Survival Game Context – Bee-Careful starts in Lisbon, Portugal. Where social (vulnerable young community), environmental (ecological unbalance and fragmentation), and mobility (elderly retired community) problematics are adressed through one common medium; greenery. Greenery forms the binder in which the previous elderly community of Lisbon convverges with a new and young community across a … Read more
Urban Mirror is an urban game that turns an ordinary walk in Trinitat Nova and Trinitat Vella into a moment of pause, reflection, and shared authorship of public space. The project is anchored in the urban and social fabric of Nou Barris, where large infrastructures such as the Ronda de Dalt physically separate neighborhoods that … Read more
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
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
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 we’ll see … 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
