The technosphere is an offshoot of and deeply intertwined with the biosphere. It alters ecosystems, disrupts biochemical processes, and impacts climate and biodiversity. This enmeshment challenges the human-nature divide, highlighting that technological systems are integral to Earth’s evolving ecology. The interstices, interconnections and the often overlooked marginal spaces and void urban zones are where this enmeshment becomes more apparent.
Immaterial Matters
Inês Nascimento, Raquel Lopes, Lorenzo Iannizzotto, Elian Stefa
Inês Nascimento is an architect, a PhD candidate and researcher at DINÂMIA’CET-Iscte. Her research focuses on the potential of utopian and radical imagination as a pedagogical approach within architectural education, mainly in the Portuguese context. She is a member of the COST Action CA23117 – CIRCUL’ARTs: Connecting Critical Pedagogies, Inclusive Art Forms and Alternative Barometers for Urban Sustainability. In 2024, she was awarded an Honourable Mention in the International Drawing and Photography Contest (DPIc) – Space and Identity of the Universities. She graduated in 2019 with the master's dissertation “Utopia, Arquitectura e Cidade: O Caso de Lisboa”.
Raquel Gameiro Lopes is an architect, PhD student and researcher at DINÂMIA’CET-Iscte, with the FCT funded research "Architecture Interplay – Emergent Urban Public Spaces in Transdisciplinary Practices". The project researches the conditions and methodologies that enable a greater diversity of typologies and models of urban public spaces in the Iberian Peninsula. The scope is focusing on transdisciplinarity, performative and regenerative architecture and urban devices. She graduated in 2020 with the master’s dissertation ‘The City as a Political Tool - The Uses of Public Space’.
Lorenzo Stefano Iannizzotto (Catania, 1994) is architect, PhD student and researcher at DINÂMIA’CET-Iscte with FCT funded research "THE CARTOGRAPHY OF THE IN-BETWEEN: Rethinking Urban Voids Approach for New Urban Challenges" and PhD visiting scholar at University of Westminster, London and Florence, Italy. He completed a master’s degree at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Florence in 2021 and his thesis with the title “Construir Entre” was published in 2023. In 2018 and 2021, he worked as architect at Ventura Trindade Arquitectos (Lisbon) and he worked in the research project “SizaATLAS. Filling the Gaps for World Heritage”.
Elian Stefa is an architect and curator who lives and works between Lisbon and Tirana. He holds a PhD Merit-Based Scholarship awarded by ISTA-Iscte and is a Researcher at DINÂMIA-CET–Iscte. His research focuses on investigating the interactions between contemporary art, curation, and spatial practices as catalysts for urban and territorial transformation. He is a Board Member of the Albanian Visual Arts Network, and Founder/Director of Galeria e Bregdetit. Stefa has curated and exhibited at several internationally acclaimed institutions, including the Albanian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2012, the New Museum in NYC, and the Istanbul Design Biennial.