While there is an imperative to ensure human survival in the face of climate change, learning from nature’s intricate systems is crucial to ensuring a good quality life for all living things. What if the boundary between humans and ecosystems didn’t exist? What if we could transform our waste into nutrients for other organisms?

These are some of the key questions that inspired the 2022 Norman Foster Foundation’s Sustainability Workshop through a focus on environmental design, urban self-sufficiency and building-integrated nature. During the week-long programme, scholars aimed to generate projects and prototypes that demonstrated the transformative potential of combining different types of intelligence—that is, ecological, human and technological.

A five-day event led by Claudia Pasquero, Co-founder of ecoLogicStudio in London, Landscape Architecture Professor at University of Innsbruck and Associated Professor at the Bartlett School of Architecture and Marco Poleto, Co-founder and Director of the architectural practice ecoLogicStudio, the workshop included seminars and lectures focussing upon environmental design, urban self-sufficiency and building-integrated nature.

The Workshop’s Academic Body brought together a wide range of practitioners from different fields related to biointegrated and ecologic design. The Academic Body included: Stefano Boeri, Founder and Director of Stefano Boeri Archiecti; Cristina Iglesias, Spanish Artist and Sculptor; Mitchell Joachim, Co-founder of Terreform ONE and Associate Professor of Practice at New York University; Mohsen Mostafavi, Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design and Distinguished Service Professor at Harvard University; Brenda Parker, Associate Professor of Sustainable Bioprocess Design at the Department of Biochemical Engineering of University College London; Claudia Pasquero, Co-founder of ecoLogicStudio in London, Landscape Architecture Professor at Innsbruck University and Associated Professor at the Bartlett School of Architecture; Katie Paterson, Scottish Artist; Marco Poletto, Co-founder of ecoLogicStudio in London; andarchitect, theorist and urban planner, Moshe Safdie.

After reviewing hundreds of applications submitted by candidates from around the world, the selection committee awarded ten scholarships to students from the following universities and institutions: Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IaaC) the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UCL); the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna; Westminster University; Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD); the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); and RIBA’s Bachelors of Architecture at the Confluence Institute for Creative Strategies and Innovation in Architecture.