urbanNext podcasts

What if infrastructure could breathe, adapt, evolve? Living Infrastructures signals a shift—from static systems to dynamic, responsive ecologies. These are infrastructures that do more than support urban life; they participate in it.
They sense their surroundings. They metabolize energy. They learn from their users. Built from biological and technological hybrids, they redefine the edge between organism and architecture.
Imagine skins that regulate climate like leaves, surfaces that respond to touch, structures that grow, decay, and regenerate. This is not architecture as object—but as system, as interface, as actor.
Living infrastructures expand the role of design: not only to construct, but to cultivate. They embed cognition into matter, embed ethics into form, and embed cities into the cycles of life itself.
In this new paradigm, buildings are not just built—they are grown. Systems are not fixed—they adapt. The city is not a machine—it’s an ecosystem.
For architects, planners, and landscape designers, this is a call to think metabolically, design ecologically, and build responsively. Infrastructure, reimagined—not as inert support, but as a living weave in the fabric of the urban.

Green New Deal Landscapes is a series hosted by Jose Alfredo Ramírez and Clara Olóriz Sanjuán, both co-directors of AA Groundlab. Each session discusses the relationship between policy making and our environment and explores how we can tackle climate change through landscape design.

Alfredo is joined by Danika Cooper and Manuel Shvartzberg Carrió to talk about indigenous practices in landscape design and how they can be crucial in tackling not only the climate emergency but also social injustice.

The conversation is a follow-up on the article The Red Deal: Decolonising Climate Action published in AD: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ad.2776

Learn more about Danika Cooper’s work:

http://www.danikacooper.com/

https://ced.berkeley.edu/people/danika-cooper

Learn more about Manuel Shvartzberg Carrió’s work:

https://usp.ucsd.edu/people/faculty/profiles/Shvartzberg_Manuel.html

https://www.sternberg-press.com/product/productive-universals-specific-situations/

This space has been sponsored by Actar Publishers and urbanNext.net.

For the most engaging publications on architecture, urbanism, and landscape architecture visit:

http://actar.com/

For access to exclusive digital content subscribe to:

https://urbannext.net/

The urbanNext_exchanges series is curated by Ricardo Devesa and Marta Bugés. Feel free to contact us via email at inputbox@urbannext.net if you want to comment on the podcast or share your work with us.

Green New Deal Landscapes is a series hosted by Jose Alfredo Ramírez and Clara Olóriz Sanjuán, both co-directors of AA Groundlab. Each session discusses the relationship between policy making and our environment and explores how we can tackle climate change through landscape design.

Alfredo and Clara are joined by Billy Fleming and Douglas Spencer to discuss the role of the architecture profession in tackling climate change and social justice.

The conversation is a follow-up on the article Crises and Contestations: The Promise and Peril of Designing a Green New Deal published in AD: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ad.2769

Learn more about Billy Fleming’s work:

https://mcharg.upenn.edu/

https://islandpress.org/books/blueprint-coastal-adaptation

https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/books/design-nature-now

Learn more about Douglas Spencer’s work:

https://spatialregister.wordpress.com/

https://birkhauser.com/books/9783035621648

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/architecture-of-neoliberalism-9781472581532/

This space has been sponsored by Actar Publishers and urbanNext.net.

For the most engaging publications on architecture, urbanism, and landscape architecture visit:

http://actar.com/

For access to exclusive digital content subscribe to:

https://urbannext.net/

The urbanNext_exchanges series is curated by Ricardo Devesa and Marta Bugés. Feel free to contact us via email at inputbox@urbannext.net if you want to comment on the podcast or share your work with us.

Green New Deal Landscapes is a series hosted by Jose Alfredo Ramírez and Clara Olóriz Sanjuán, both co-directors of AA Groundlab. Each session discusses the relationship between policy making and our environment and explores how we can tackle climate change through landscape design.

Alfredo is joined by Neil Brenner and Kai Heron to discuss global environmental politics and inherited approaches to urbanization.

The conversation is a follow-up on the article Towards the Abolition of the Hinterlands published in AD: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ad.2781

Learn more about Neil Brenner’s work:

https://sociology.uchicago.edu/directory/neil-brenner

https://chicago.academia.edu/NeilBrenner

https://urbantheorylab.net/

Learn more about Kai Heron’s work:

https://www.bbk.ac.uk/our-staff/profile/9330067/kai-heron

This space has been sponsored by Actar Publishers and urbanNext.net.

For the most engaging publications on architecture, urbanism, and landscape architecture visit:

http://actar.com/

For access to exclusive digital content subscribe to:

https://urbannext.net/

The urbanNext_exchanges series is curated by Ricardo Devesa and Marta Bugés. Feel free to contact us via email at inputbox@urbannext.net if you want to comment on the podcast or share your work with us.

Green New Deal Landscapes is a series hosted by Jose Alfredo Ramírez and Clara Olóriz Sanjuán, both co-directors of AA Groundlab. Each session discusses the relationship between policy making and our environment and explores how we can tackle climate change through landscape design.

Alfredo is joined by Alex Breedon, Liam Mouritz and Kaylie Salvatori to talk about how a decolonial cultural shift in land management can contribute to the mitigation of the climate crisis and the need to learn from design practices and knowledges from indigenous cultures in the Australian context.

The conversation is a follow-up on the article Country-Led Approaches in Land Management and Design published in AD: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ad.2778

Learn more about Alex Breedon’s work:

https://www.aspect-studios.com/people/alex-breedon

Learn more about Liam Mouritz’s work:

https://aaschool.academia.edu/LiamMouritz

https://www.hassellstudio.com/conversation/open-source-city

https://landscapeaustralia.com/articles/an-issue-on-time/

https://issuu.com/aalandscapeurbanism/docs/littoral_negotiations

Learn more about Kaylie Salvatori’s work:

https://www.colastudio.com.au/cola-studiobr>

This space has been sponsored by Actar Publishers and urbanNext.net.

For the most engaging publications on architecture, urbanism, and landscape architecture visit:

http://actar.com/

For access to exclusive digital content subscribe to:

https://urbannext.net/

The urbanNext_exchanges series is curated by Ricardo Devesa and Marta Bugés. Feel free to contact us via email at inputbox@urbannext.net if you want to comment on the podcast or share your work with us.