Living Architecture: ecoLogicStudio’s Claudia Pasquero on the New Foundations for Architecture and the Bio-Digital Age

By Julia Gamolina

Claudia Pasquero is an architect, curator, author, and educator operating at the intersection of biology, computation, and design. A co-founder of ecoLogicStudio based between London and Turin, she is also the founder of the Synthetic Landscape Lab and Head of IOUD at Innsbruck University. In addition, Pasquero is the Director of the Urban Morphogenesis Lab at the Bartlett UCL.

Pasquero curated the 2017 Tallinn Architecture Biennale and is co-author of several books. Her work has been exhibited globally, including the Centre Pompidou, the Venice Architecture Biennale, and the Mori Museum. In her interview with Julia Gamolina, Pasquero talks about communications within systems, and creating an architecture that integrates with nature, advising those just starting their careers to take note from the natural world.

JG: I really admire your focus on living architectures and biotechnology. How are you advancing your agenda in 2025, and what's the newest element you're exploring in terms of living architecture right now?

CP: At the moment, we are working with the mycotic cycle — the lifecycle of a fungus. We’ve studied the cycle —the stages of growth, reproduction, and spore dispersal — for several years and now we believe it is ready to be applied in architectural developments. In this case, we are working with microorganisms, which possess their own intelligence, capable of metabolizing certain urban waste and transforming it into food or architectural materials. Starting with photosynthesis and mycelium, over the years we have developed technological systems and materials to create furniture or architectural components. With mycelium, for example, we have created columns and seating.

Our upcoming projects for 2025 range from an installation for the Solar Biennale in Lausanne, to Glacial Drip, a collaboration aimed at creating a spirulina-based ice cream flavor. We are also constructing an AirGarden within the office space of a private client in central London.

Claudia Pasquero inside Deep Forest at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Photography by Rasmus Hjortshøj.

AirBubble restorative space by ecoLogicStudio. Photography by Pepe Fotografia.

Now let's go back a little bit — tell me about why and where you studied architecture.

I engineering in Turin, architecture at the AA in London, and I also attended drama school. I was drawn to Turin especially because it is a city with strong technological and artistic backgrounds. The Baroque architect Guarino Guarini who engaged heavily with geometry, mathematics, and the abstraction of nature came from Turin.

“Robotization, automation, and artificial intelligence...It’s the way we adopt them, the way we engage and interact with these technologies that will define whether they will be positive forces or not.”

— Claudia Pasquero

Tell me about your experiences working for various offices before starting your practice. What did you learn that you still apply today?

I was really influenced by the encounter with Gianni Vattimo, a well-known Italian philosopher who ran seminars at the engineering school in Turin specifically on the relationship between technology, philosophy, and art. I also discovered Gregory Bateson and his book Steps to an Ecology of Mind, which was the inspiration for the name of our studio. By the time I arrived at the AA, the work of figures such as Vattimo and Bateson were inspiring conversations around a form of architecture that engaged science and biology on a deep level, which further propelled our interests in the field.

My computational interests emerged in tandem with this. In cybernetics — the study of how systems control and communicate information, and how they use that information to regulate themselves — you work with both rational languages and meta-languages. These meta-languages have patterns that somehow straddle the natural and artificial. In that sense, biology and computation actually merge together in their tendency to express themselves through patterns rather than verbal logic or languages such as Italian and English.

How did ecoLogicStudio officially come about?

ecoLogicStudio’s cofounder Marco Poletto and myself met at the university in Turin and studied together at the AA in London. Upon finishing our studies, in 2005 we founded the studio as it is now, a design innovation firm since we design spatially integrated systems at all scales.

Looking back at it all, what have been the biggest challenges?

I'm not someone who thinks robotization, automation, and artificial intelligence will be evil, and that there is an innate danger there. It’s the way we adopt them, the way we engage and interact with these technologies that will define whether they will be positive forces or not.

Unfortunately, now, the industry that is pushing this technology out in the world is doing it within a model that is quite destructive of life. If you look at the way these technologies are applied or developed, they are used for control, or for extracting as much as we can from the world. I think that the real challenge will be to change this point of view.

“We’re pushing for a fundamental shift from the mechanical age, where architecture was an instrument to control and frame nature, towards a bio-digital age where architecture becomes an interface towards the living world.”

— Claudia Pasquero

Who are you admiring now and why?

I’m admiring Physarum Polycephalum — slime mould — for its ability to think through a collective form of intelligence embedded in its materiality. I admire cyanobacteria for their ability to re-metabolize waste and pollutants in resources. I admire mycelium for its ability to generate vast but delicate communication networks.

Design Apothecary in Turin by ecoLogicStudio. Photography by Pepe Fotografia.

Parco della Repubblica in Sirolo. Public seating area concept by ecoLogicStudio.

What is the impact you’d like to have on the world? What is your core mission? And, what does success in that look like to you?

ecoLogicStudio’s mission — together with our academic partners at Innsbruck University and the Bartlett UCL — is to reinvent the foundations of architecture, transforming the so-called “machine for living” into a living architectural machine. We’re pushing for a fundamental shift from the mechanical age, where architecture was an instrument to control and frame nature, towards a bio-digital age where architecture becomes an interface towards the living world. This transition is necessary if architecture is to become a true aid in the fight to mitigate the effects of climate change.

Finally, what advice do you have for those starting their career? Would your advice be any different for women?

Think like a slime mould, re-metabolize like a cynobacteria, communicate like a mycelium network, and ultimately design morpohogenesis rather than morphology.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.