Dr Pierangelo Marco Scravaglieri

Bio

I am an experimental designer and educator, originally from Catania, Italy, where I earned a first-class honours Master’s degree in Architecture and Construction Engineering. My academic path has always been driven by a desire to test architecture’s boundaries, to treat design not only as a profession but also as a cultural and ethical practice. This motivation led me to Newcastle University (UK), where I undertook doctoral studies in Experimental Architecture. My PhD, Liquid Architecture: Experimental Practices of Design in a State of Flux, explored fluid infrastructures, analogue computation, and the architectural potential of liquids. By challenging the Vitruvian principle of firmitas, my work examined how ‘wet systems’ such as bioreactors might reshape our understanding of buildings and infrastructures. Published by Routledge in 2024, this research introduced new ways of thinking about sustainable design and addressed the complexity of dynamic, multi-agent environments in the 21st century.

During my doctoral years, I worked closely with faculty in Newcastle and with collaborators across Europe. These relationships enabled me to bring experimental architecture into public conversation through exhibitions and biennales. Amongst the other, my work was featured in Eco-Visionaries: Art for a Planet in a State of Emergency at Matadero in Madrid, Is This Tomorrow? at Whitechapel Gallery in London, and Self-Built Utopias at the Great Exhibition of the North in Newcastle. Earlier, my research was part of the Tallinn Architecture Biennale, BioTallinn, which introduced speculative architectural futures to an international audience. These projects were not simply exhibitions of form: they were opportunities to present architecture as dialogue — between culture, ecology, technology, and society — rather than as purely technical pursuit.

This focus on cultural and ecological dialogue continued in my professional research. As Lead Designer for the Living Architecture (LIAR) project, I investigated how architectural knowledge evolves in response to shifting environmental and economic conditions. This work centred on microbial fuel cells and other forms of ‘living technologies,’ exploring how biological systems can become active components in buildings. It was here that I developed my interest in architecture as a relational field able to absorb methods from science and engineering, while still asking cultural and ethical questions.

My research trajectory attracted the attention of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Italian Space Agency (ASI), which jointly awarded me a scholarship to attend the International Space University’s Space Studies Program in 2022. At ISU, I joined a multidisciplinary cohort and began to explore the question of architecture in space contexts. How might design respond to microgravity? What happens when we confront the absence of traditional ground, orientation, and material behaviour? These questions have since become central to my ongoing research. I continue to collaborate with ISU colleagues and aerospace professionals, developing projects that stretch architectural thinking beyond Earth, while always looping back insights into terrestrial contexts and environmental design on Earth.

Teaching has been an integral part of my career since 2017, spanning roles at Newcastle University, Loughborough University, Manchester Metropolitan University, the University of Sheffield, and Lanzhou University Wales College in China. Each institution sharpened my sense that architectural education must be experimental, transdisciplinary, and globally engaged. These experiences taught me that students thrive when given the freedom to explore, when the boundaries between disciplines are blurred, and when design becomes a means to ask urgent ecological questions.

Today, at the University for the Creative Arts (UCA), I lecture in Environmental Design at the Institute of Creativity and Innovation (ICI) in Zhangzhou. My teaching covers experimental and techno-ecological practices, bridging analogue experimentation with computational design tools. In this context, I emphasise ecological literacy, encouraging students to evaluate design against climate and societal data. I also situate design within broader cultural contexts, drawing inspiration from science fiction and from astronaut experiences like the ‘overview effect’ to help students rethink how we inhabit Earth while encourage them to work with critical, creative, and research-led methods.

Over the years, I have remained committed to collaborative research, whether through design experiments, journal contributions, or international networks. I have acted as a referee for Sustainable Mediterranean Construction (SMC) Magazine. My creative work continues to evolve across projects such as Liquid Architecture, Living Bricks & Microbial Fuel Cells, AI-Inverted Architecture, and Symbiotic Design. Each of these projects experiments with how architecture can act as a mediator between human and non-human systems, between speculative visions and practical technologies.

At the heart of all this is a conviction that architecture must embrace ecology as a formative principle, not just as an add-on. Design is, for me, an ethical act, one that shapes our collective relationship with the environment. My ambition is to continue building bridges between experimental design, ecological literacy, and space studies, producing research and teaching that prepare the next generation of designers to confront the challenges of climate change, planetary crises, and beyond.

Links to my research, publications, and ongoing projects can be found through my academic profile at UCA, my Routledge publication Liquid Architecture, and professional networks including LinkedIn.