Melissa Ingaruca

Biography

Melissa Ingaruca is a researcher and designer in multispecies urbanism, climate neutral cities and urban sustainability transformations. Currently, she is a PhD Candidate for the University of Helsinki exploring transdisciplinary research for designing multispecies cities with emerging technologies, fellow at the Next Generation Foresight Practitioners (NGFP) network (holding the 2022 main award to implement an experiential foresight summer school for multispecies cities in Berlin); early-career member of NATURA (Nature-based solutions for Urban Resilience in the Anthropocene) and designer in a myco-fabrication (biofabrication with mycelium) community in Berlin

Her research and practice has explored  the radicalness of urban futures from a sustainability standpoint, and how we can trigger “transformative” imagination. She addresses the dominant mechanical/dualistic/anthropocentric worldviews underpinning current urban design practice and cities imaginaries, and explores the opportunities of embracing alternative relational worldviews such as multispecies thinking as the seeds for radical urban futures, in storytelling, in scenario building, and the use of emerging technologies (extended reality technologies and biofabrication technologies) in urban design.

Back to retreat ⟶