IN-PERSON MADRID FOCUS ON PEDAGOGY. SECTION A

Abstract

This paper presents the pedagogical design studio as a series of socioecological laboratories, where strategies of stewardship, repair, and regeneration are tested, visualized, and reimagined. Operating within regional planning, territorial design, and landscape-based methodologies, the studio addresses ecological fragility, governance frameworks, and geopolitical interests shaping contemporary landscapes. The methodology foregrounds regenerative ecosystems and community-driven practices. Students engage in regional analysis and territorial inquiry through precise geospatial methodologies, including archival maps, scans, orthophotogrammetry, satellite imagery, QGIS-based mapping, and intersectional cartographies. By layering systemic information the studio connects natural dynamics – such as seasonal cycles, successions, migration paths, with synthetic systems like power infrastructures, and geopolitical borders. The pedagogical model emphasizes critical and imaginative investigation, combining testimony and proposition to contribute to collective imaginaries of landscape sovereignty, nature’s rights, and systemic repair. Design work focuses on co-relational infrastructures, nature-based systems, and eco-infrastructures conceived as performative grounds and responsive environments. These systems operate over time, absorbing disturbance, aligning with ecological cycles, and supporting living systems. Through immersive three-dimensional research environments, complex territorial modeling, and long-term remediation scenarios, the methodology enables students to expose environmental damage and infrastructural violence while formulating restorative, emancipatory futures. By bridging boundaries, reconnecting disrupted ecologies, and envisioning reservoirs of ecological and cultural resilience, the methodology reframes architectural education as an active agent in territorial stewardship and socioecological transformation.