PEAK-Expert
Claudia Pasquero
Focus
PHOTOSYNTHETIC ARCHITECTURE, SYNTHETIC LANDSCAPES, CLIMATE-ACTIVE-DESIGN
Contact
E-Mail:
claudia.pasquero@uibk.ac.at
Phone:
+43 512 507 664710
Web:
Department of Urban Design and Land Use Planning
Personal Homepage
Languages: English, German, Italian
Claudia Pasquero is head of the Institute for Urban Development and Spatial Planning at the University of Innsbruck. She is a landscape architect, but not in the traditional sense: Pasquero is an expert in synthetic landscapes, a form of landscape architecture that focuses on how the natural and the artificial can be combined to create new synthetic relationships - and thus potentially find solutions to problems such as climate change. One example of this is photosynthetic architecture, which makes use of organisms such as microalgae that are able to photosynthesize and reprocess CO2.
Focus cloud: Landscape architecture, synthetic landscape, philosophy, biology, photosynthetic architecture
About
Claudia Pasquero is a leading architect and researcher developing climate-active systems that merge biology, computation, and design. She is internationally known for her pioneering work in photosynthetic architecture and synthetic landscapes—built environments that capture CO₂, clean air, and produce biomass. Through her platform PhotoSynthetica™ (a collaboration between ecoLogicStudio, UIBK, and UCL), she has developed algae-based facades, canopies, and pavilions that function as living infrastructures, contributing directly to carbon sequestration and urban air purification. These projects, including installations at Venice Biennale, COP26, and Centre Pompidou, showcase architecture’s potential as a regenerative force. Her research challenges conventional design by redefining aesthetics as ecological intelligence—the visible performance of adaptive, multispecies systems. In her books Systemic Architecture: Operating Manual for the Self Organizing City and BioDesign in the Age of AI: DeepGreen, she explores how architecture can evolve from static form into dynamic, biosynthetic infrastructure. Pasquero’s design philosophy is rooted in the belief that cities must rewild: by embedding living organisms and photosynthetic systems into the built environment, we can transform architecture into a tool for planetary regeneration. Her work offers scalable solutions—from indoor CO₂-absorbing prototypes to city-wide bio-integrated systems—equipping architecture to meet the challenges of the climate crisis.