IAAC – Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia
Global Summer School Program 2025
Online Course: Synchronous & Asynchronous Agenda.
Duration: 21st July – 25th July 2025
GSS25 URBAN ANALYTICS FOR DATA DRIVEN & PEOPLE CENTRED CITIES
Shaping inclusive and co-designed urban environments
Syllabus
Key topics: Digital innovation, Data Analytics, Co-Design, Inclusive Cities, Human-Centred Cities, Urban Data
This year the GSS Urban Analytics for Data Driven & People Centred Cities will explore the integration of citizen’s needs, through digital innovation and urban analytics, in urban design, enabling cities and urban environments to become more inclusive to the local communities. It will equip students to on one side analyse urban environments from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives, leveraging open and remote data sources; and on the other side, identifying, potentially collecting, and processing data coming directly from local communities, to enhance informed decision making urban design with the real needs of the collective who inhabit them.
This is framed in the era of Big Data and new technologies, in which it is essential to use available tools to analyse cities exhaustively. This approach, mixed with the integration of collaborative and participatory methodologies, helps to understand urban problems accurately, from the perspectives of individuals and collectives, and consider their direct voices. Students will learn how to perform urban analysis, and then develop informed urban analysis that actually addresses the challenges faced by citizens of contemporary cities.
The module will address how urban analysis, based on new sources of data and computational techniques, enables us to study cities in depth. This can contribute to their informed design and planning, allowing us to reveal patterns more precisely, as well as test project options and draw conclusions in environmental and socioeconomic terms. This last step will allow the students to evaluate proposals objectively and establish quality standards for projects aligned with sustainable urban development.
Through a combination of interactive lectures and mentoring sessions, students will gain knowledge in leveraging digital tools and participatory methods to foster collaborative urban planning processes. Specifically students will acquire knowledge in urban analysis, exploring cases of data application to understand the dynamics of cities. They learn how to use QGIS, a widely used urban analysis and representation software. They will apply this knowledge when analysing an urban area and designing a conceptual proposal at the end of the course.
Learning objectives
At course completion the student will:
- Manipulate and combine data from different data source and data typologies
- Set up a flexible protocol to analyse different urban contexts in the world
- Learn how to creatively represent geospatial data and how to create a web map
Previous Knowledge / Students background requirements
The workshop is open to all applicants with a bachelor degree (or in progress) in any field related to Architecture, Design, Social Sciences, Arts and Engineering. Any skills and understanding of QGIS tools is welcome.
Faculty
Valeria Ospital Greslebin is an architect from Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires. She holds an MS in Design Theory and Pedagogy from SCI-Arc, and was an Assistant Teacher at Studio Lynn in Universität für angewandte Kunst in Vienna. Prior to this, Valeria taught at Di Tella in core and thesis studios, as well as aesthetics seminars. She was also involved in SCI-Arc’s research department’s project on developing alternative ways of measuring displacement pressures in Los Angeles. She has collaborated with the CEAC (Center for Contemporary Architecture Studies) and was editor and contributor to SCI-Arc’s Offramp 18. Her research interests revolve around the use of software as a policy-making tool and harnessing qualitative and quantitative data to inform urban transformation projects.
Lecturers
Mathilde Marengo (she/her) is an Australian – French – Italian PhD Architect whose research focuses on the Contemporary Urban Phenomenon, its integration with technology, and its implications on the future of our planet. Within today’s critical environmental, social and economic framework, she investigates the responsibility of designers in answering these challenges through circular and metabolic design.
She is Head of Studies, Co-director of the Master in City & Technology, Faculty and PhD Supervisor at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia. Mathilde develops her research at IAAC’s Advanced Architecture Group (AAG), an interdisciplinary research group investigating emerging technologies of information, interaction and manufacturing for the design and transformation of the cities, buildings and public spaces. Within this context, she investigates, designs and experiments with innovative educational formats based on holistic, multi-disciplinary and multi-scalar design approaches, oriented towards materialization, within the AAG agenda of redefining the paradigm of design education in the Information and Experience Age.
Iacopo Neri (he/him) is the Master in City & Technology’s Urban Computation Lead, his research situated at the intersection between architecture, computer science and urban planning. He holds a Master of Science in Architecture with Distinction at The Polytechnic University of Milan, and attended a Master in City and Technology at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC, Spain) after presenting a paper about Swarm Intelligences for crowd-based analysis during the Responsive Cities Symposium (2017, Barcelona). He has been involved as a teaching assistant since 2015 at the University of Florence, later, at The Polytechnic University of Milan, and finally at IAAC where he is currently part of the City and Technology computational research team. He also works as a computational designer at External Reference Architecture Bureau, Barcelona.
Maria Isabel da Rocha Lima (she/her) is a Brazilian architect, urban strategist and researcher. She is currently the coordinator of MaCT (Master in City & Technology) and researcher at the Urban Sciences Lab. Isabel also holds a Master in Urban Management and Development from IHS, Erasmus University of Rotterdam. She has previously worked in Portugal and Brazil, within her specialty of public participation and engaging workshops on the topics of urban rehabilitation, capacity building, right to the city and sustainable development, either as a moderator, project manager or researcher. She has also worked with IHS as part of the Alumni Board, attending WUF on their behalf and moderating a training event on small-scale initiates. Her research lies on the topic of urban strategies, participatory planning and processes, governance and right to the city.
Ana Gallego (she/her) is an architectural, urban designer and researcher at Urban Science Lab at IAAC, carrying out innovative and sustainable projects at different scales. This year she has been awarded as one of the 25 emerging researchers in the field of architecture and urbanism in Europe by Learn, Interact and Networking in Architecture Programme, a European Union program formed by the leading institutions of Architecture and Urbanism in Europe.
Her work has been selected, among other institutions, by the New European Bauhaus, the Mostra di Architettura di Venezia, MODEL. Festival de Arquitecturas and Barcelona Architecture Week. She has also collaborated with different European universities giving lectures on urban design. She is currently collaborating with various European institutions such as the Kosovo Foundation of Architecture, the Timisoara Architecture Biennale, and the Haus Der Architektur Research Lab. She previously worked in different architectural and urban planning firms such as AMB. Metropolitan Area of Barcelona, Miralles Tagliabue EMBT, Sol89 Arquitectos or Pargade Architectes.
Laura Guimarães (she/her) is a Brazilian architect and urban planner, with a Master’s degree in City & Technology from the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia. She is currently the manager of the Urban Sciences Lab of IAAC, responsible for coordinating research and educational initiatives on urban design and planning, along with business partnerships and consultancy on urban projects around the world. Laura’s investigations are oriented towards a combined data-driven and human-centered approach to urban development, based on informed decisions through the use of both digital analysis and citizen participation. She has been applying this approach in projects, capacity building events and courses, such as the “Internet of People” Studio in the Master in City & Technology at IAAC. Moreover, her work has been presented in different conferences around the world, such as in the CIVITAS Conference “Mobility Powered by the Youth” (Germany) and the 16th AESOP “Young Academics Conference” (Turkey).
Weekly Schedule & Time Table
Option 1 – Synchronous calendar (Barcelona time – GMT+2)
Recommend to European, African, Asian and Australian participants.
From Monday 21st July – Friday 25th July 2025
Teaching activities will run from 10.00 to 14.00 GMT+2
– 8 hrs of live teaching
– 8 hrs of live mentoring and exercises review
– 1 hr of IAAC summer lecture
– Final GSS diploma certificate ceremony
Option 2 – Asynchronous calendar (America time – GMT-4)
Solution recommended to participants from all the time zones who are looking for a more flexible schedule.
From Monday 21st July – Friday 25th July 2025
Live teaching activities will run from 11.00 am to 1.00 pm (GMT-4)
– 8 hrs of recorded teaching
– 8 hrs of live mentoring and exercises review
– 1 hr of IAAC summer lecture
– Final live GSS diploma certificate ceremony
Workshop schedule
A detailed schedule of the workshop will be shared with the participants prior to the workshop’s beginning.
Main tools
Students need to use their laptop and a list of installable links will be sent a few days before the program starts.