An Overlooked Crisis :

Across Europe, and particularly within cities like Porto, insect populations are collapsing. Pollinators, decomposers, and foundational links in every food web -arthropods are disappearing at a critical rate due to habitat fragmentation, pollution, climate change, and human-dominated land use. Despite their ecological importance, insects remain overlooked in environmental design discourse, something this project seeks to change. Their disappearance reflects a crisis of both biodiversity and architectural responsibility: who are we designing for?

A Regenerative Proposal :

Porto’s Living Laboratories re-frames architecture as a living, collaborative system — not just for humans, but for the ecosystems that sustain us. This project transforms Trindade Metro Station into a shared infrastructure for research, habitat, and regeneration. It proposes a new role for cities: as agents of ecological repair and biodiversity stewardship, rather than ecological erasure.

At the design core of this proposal is the Living Wall: a modular, high-performance system that functions as both structure and ecosystem. Made up of Gridded insect-inhabited mycelium blocks, bio-laboratories, and climate systems, the wall processes air, energy, and data. Sharing them across human and non-human users. Its architecture draws on the network intelligence of insect colonies, reimagining the way buildings process and service.

The design does not build over nature, but works with it. Rather than construct new, the proposal retrofits the existing metro infrastructure, using its underground corridors to re-establish fragmented insect habitats between the correlation of metro stops and green space. Transit becomes a vehicle for ecological continuity, reconnecting Porto’s natural systems throughout the city

Insects, often unseen, are vital to everything from food production to soil health and planetary stability. This project gives them spatial dignity, infrastructural care, and a future within the fabric of the city. It proposes an architectural typology built on coexistence— a multi-species system that is living, generative, and responsible.