IAAC presents: “Prototyping the Future” a curated selection of experimental prototypes that rethink architecture, technology, and ecology across IAAC’s master’s programmes.
What does it mean to prototype the future? At IAAC – Advanced Architecture Barcelona, it means building visions into matter, challenging the conventions of design, and confronting urgent questions through hands-on experimentation. Prototyping the Future, the central concept for IAAC’s Exhibition 2025, is the culmination of a year of intense research and making, where students present the prototypes they have developed across multiple programmes.
Deployed across the two floors of IAAC’s Atelier building, the exhibition invites visitors into a living lab of architectural exploration. Here, every prototype is a fragment of a broader ecosystem of research. The works on display span themes such as:
- Bio-based and synthetic materials
- Self-sufficient and regenerative buildings
- Robotic and automated construction
- Data-driven urban planning
- AI-powered architectural intelligence
- Citizen-led participatory platforms
Each of these directions embodies the IAAC ethos: thinking through making, and making as a way to rethink. The projects are distributed throughout the building, creating a polyphonic narrative of what architecture can be when it becomes a medium for systemic transformation.
At the heart of the exhibition lies a sequence of taglines—one for each master’s programme—that frame the intent behind the work. These are grouped within three thematic domains:
ARCHITECTURE, COMPUTATION, AI
- Master in Advanced Architecture: Crafting responsive architectures for a rapidly changing world
- Master in Design for Distributed Innovation: Reimagining production toward planetary resilience
- Master in Advanced Computation for Architecture and Design: Envisioning tomorrow’s habitats with today’s tools
- Master in Design for Emergent Futures: Exploring design’s frontiers by materializing alternative presents
- Master in AI for Architecture & the Built Environment: Pioneering AI applications for the built environment
DIGITAL FABRICATION & ROBOTICS
- Master in Robotics & Advanced Construction: Powering the next wave of sustainable, tech-driven construction
- Postgraduate 3D Printing in Architecture: Augmenting material research through robotic manufacturing
- FABRICADEMY: Synthesizing circularity, textiles, and bio-digital design
- FAB ACADEMY: Expanding fabrication through distributed education
REGENERATIVE BUILDINGS & ECOLOGICAL URBANISMS
- Master in Advanced Ecological Buildings & Biocities: Transforming local ecologies into regenerative buildings
- Master in Advanced Urban Planning & Data Analytics: Shaping data-driven and spatially just cities
- Maestría en Urbanismo Próximo: Rethinking urban development across Latin American landscapes
Together, these lines build a rhythm that defines the collective spirit of the exhibition:
We craft, reimagine, envision, explore, pioneer, power, augment, synthesize, expand, transform, shape, rethink the future—one prototype at a time.
Come and witness how the next generation of architects, designers and technologists are reshaping the built environment—materially, digitally, and ecologically.
Register now!