Master in Advanced Architecture – Final Presentation
A look at the three research studios shaping the first year of IAAC’s flagship programme
The first year of the Master in Advanced Architecture final presentation marked the culmination of a year of systemic design, material experimentation, and multiscalar thinking. Across three research studios, students explored architecture through real-world constraints — from energy and territory to material reuse.
Throughout the year, students engaged in speculative design grounded in digital fabrication, environmental modelling and full-scale prototyping. Each studio addressed a distinct domain — energy, urbanism or materiality — yet all converged in a shared ambition: to rethink architecture in the face of planetary urgency.
In the Self Sufficient Buildings Studio, students worked with energy as a design driver. What started as physical experiments with heat, airflow and radiation evolved into housing proposals that combine hybrid strategies, spatial logic and construction systems adapted to climate and material conditions.
The X-Urban Design Studio focused on territorial and infrastructural systems. Students explored multiscalar urban strategies rooted in local contexts, ecological relationships and digital technologies — challenging dominant models by proposing decentralised and adaptive urban frameworks.
The Digital Matter Studio dealt with circularity and material intelligence. Instead of designing from standard components, students used reclaimed matter and urban waste to build systems that decompose, regenerate or evolve. Each prototype formed part of a broader material logic, contributing to a circular carbon economy.
The Master in Advanced Architecture brings together different ways of learning through making. These final presentations didn’t aim to deliver polished results, but to share processes, ideas in progress, and experiments grounded in real design challenges.
Jury and Academic Contributors
The projects were reviewed by an international jury:
Daniel Ibañez (Director IAAC & Urbanitree); Eduardo Gascón Alvarez (Forma Systems); Joan Gener González (h3o architects); Jordi Miramé (Bajet Studio); Olga Syrnyk (BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group); Teresa Cheung (EPFL); Jordi Mansilla (MIRLA Studio); Eduardo Rico (IAAC & The AA); Eve Nnaji (add.apt, Even Designed); Joana Carla Soares Gonçalves (UCL, AA, Central Saint Martins); Manuel Gausa (IAAC & University of Genoa); Emanuele Naboni (Royal Danish Academy, UNSW, Norman Foster Foundation); Charlene Smith (Materiom); Laia Mogas Soldevila (dumoLab*, University of Pennsylvania); Jonathan Minchin (Ecological Interaction Applied Research Group, IAAC).
Academic guidance:
Areti Markopoulou (Academic Director), with contributions from Edouard Cabay, Mathilde Marengo, Laura Guimarães, and Nikol Kirova.
Programme coordination:
Gabriele Jureviciute.
With support from:
Erpinio Labrozzi, Farah Ali, Valeria Ospital, Aleyna Gültekin, Vivek Venkateshappa.
And additional contributions by:
Martí Riera, Didac Torrent, Akshay Madapura, Ana Gallego, Iacopo Neri, Paco Villeda and fabrication lead Marielena Papandreou.
Studio advisor:
Willy Müller.