Claudia Pasquero

Prof. Claudia Pasquero is a leading architect and researcher developing climate-active systems that merge biology, computation, and design. Her team is internationally recognized for pioneering work in photosynthetic architecture and synthetic landscapes, built environments that capture CO₂, purify air, and produce biomass while promoting urban wellbeing.

Through the research platform PhotoSynthetica™, a collaboration between ecoLogicStudio, the University of Innsbruck (UIBK), and University College London (UCL), she and her team have developed algae-based façades, canopies, and pavilions that function as living infrastructures, contributing directly to carbon sequestration and urban air purification. These projects, including installations at the Venice Architecture Biennale, COP26, and the Centre Pompidou, demonstrate architecture’s potential as a regenerative force.

Her team’s research challenges conventional design paradigms by redefining aesthetics as ecological intelligence, the visible performance of adaptive, multispecies systems. In the books Systemic Architecture: Operating Manual for the Self-Organizing City (Routledge, 2012) and BioDesign in the Age of AI: DeepGreen (Routledge, 2023), co-authored with Dr. Marco Poletto, she explores how architecture can evolve from static form into dynamic, biosynthetic infrastructure.

Her team’s design philosophy is rooted in the belief that cities must be rewilded. By embedding living organisms and photosynthetic systems into the built environment, architecture can be transformed into a tool for planetary regeneration. Their work offers scalable solutions, from indoor CO₂-absorbing prototypes to city-wide bio-integrated systems, equipping architecture to address the challenges of the climate crisis.

At an institutional level, Prof. Pasquero holds the Chair of Landscape Architecture at the University of Innsbruck, where she founded the Synthetic Landscape Lab and currently serves as Head of the Institute of Urban Design. She is the Co-Founder, with Dr. Marco Poletto, of ecoLogicStudio, a world-renowned design innovation practice based in London and Torino since 2005. Prof. Pasquero is also an RC16 Tutor and founder of the Urban Morphogenesis Lab at The Bartlett, UCL. Her research and practice operate internationally, while her professional and family life spans London, Innsbruck, and Torino.