A New Design Paradigm: Shaping the Future with Natural Intelligence

Nature has spent millions of years perfecting systems that regenerate, adapt, and stabilize themselves without external control. As climate uncertainty accelerates and urban pressures intensify, design disciplines are increasingly turning to these natural mechanisms for guidance. For this reason, the 13th Barcelona International Landscape Biennial places “Natural Intelligence” at the center of its agenda.

This theme urges us to see nature not as a decorative overlay but as a decision-making partner. Designing with natural intelligence means shaping spaces that evolve with ecological rhythms rather than against them.

What Does Natural Intelligence Question?

1. Treating landscape as a living entity

A landscape is not static; it shifts through rainfall, drought, soil movement, species migration, and seasonal patterns. Natural Intelligence calls designers to collaborate with these dynamics instead of freezing them in place.

2. Moving from human-centered design to multispecies thinking

Discussions at the Biennial highlight a shift toward landscapes that consider the needs of birds, insects, soil organisms, and non-human life forms as equal design stakeholders.

3. Using ecological data as a primary design driver

Soil permeability, hydrological performance, wind corridors, and biodiversity indicators are no longer background details—they have become essential design questions.

Three Design Principles We Can Learn from Natural Intelligence

1. Enabling self-healing landscapes

Natural systems renew themselves autonomously. In design, this translates to low-maintenance landscapes capable of stabilizing over time and responding to environmental stress.

2. Working with microclimates

Shade, wind direction, soil moisture, and sun exposure shape the character of a landscape. Natural Intelligence encourages designers to guide these conditions instead of overriding them.

3. Centering water cycles in design

In natural ecosystems, water carries energy, life, and resilience. Permeable grounds, bioswales, rain gardens, and slow-water systems become core tools of this approach.

Why the Era of Natural Intelligence Has Begun

• Rigid systems are fragile in a changing climate. Adaptive, self-regulating landscapes endure longer and cost less.

• Cities must reintegrate the natural world. Heat islands, flooding, and biodiversity decline demand nature-driven solutions.

• Living landscapes build emotional connection. Humans feel more grounded in environments that behave and grow like living organisms.

Skab’s Perspective: Design + Ecology + Adaptation

At Skab, Natural Intelligence is not a theoretical idea—it is the foundation for every project.

• Design begins with ecological analysis: local climate, biodiversity potential, water cycles, and soil health.

• We create landscapes that mature over time: not fixed images, but evolving ecological systems.

• Mediterranean-resilient plant communities: drought-tolerant, adaptive, predominantly native.

• Technology as a bridge to nature: climate models, environmental simulations, and parametric tools help us design with ecological logic.

The Landscape of the Future Is a Learning Organism

Natural Intelligence reminds us that Good design does not imitate nature— it learns from it.

Landscapes built with this mindset become living systems with cycles, relationships, and memory. At Skab, our mission is to create resilient, adaptive, and ecologically meaningful landscapes that evolve alongside the world around them.