Biomaterials made from microalgae and a project that proposes using communal composts bins to produce biogas are included in our latest school show by students at the IE University Spain.

Also featured is a board game designed to help players understand the stock market and a project exploring traditional fishing practice alternatives as a solution to overfishing.

Students also looked at how to preserve the heritage and supporting the existing infrastructure in a number of industrial and urban regions.

IE University Spain

School: IE University Spain
Courses: Bachelor Degree in Architectural Studies and Bachelor Degree in Design

School statement:

"The Bachelor in Architectural Studies at the IE University Spain prepares students to transform the world and make meaningful environments. With a project-based approach to learning and a diverse body of faculty and students, the program synthesizes creative, technical, environmental and social considerations and is driven by a forward-looking and entrepreneurial spirit.

"We teach our students to master the essential tools and skills of the architect while simultaneously encouraging them to think broadly and creatively about how these tools and skills might be used in the future.

"The Bachelor in Design is a comprehensive degree that seeks to challenge today's physical, experiential, functional and emotional reality. The degree is designed for flexible and audacious individuals seeking creative solutions for a better and more sustainable life.

"This degree uses a unique combination of a solid foundation in design, a demanding project-based methodology and a focus on real-life challenges. Rigorous scientific and creative aspects of design are combined with a business perspective, allowing you to transform and improve people's daily lives."

Bridging Identities: a collaborative response to food systems in El Perelló by Moira Burela

"Perelló is located in the Albufera Natural Park, surrounded by rice fields, greenhouses and water. Bridging Identities centres on the cultural importance of food to this area, contextualising and examining the existing processes of food production surrounding the site.

"The project aims to create supporting infrastructure to optimise the food produced in the area and encourage sustainable culinary tourism. By building two pedestrian bridges, the idea is to create an unbroken circular path that opens multiple routes. This will result in different special conditions and allow for porosity and smooth pedestrian transition between the rice fields and the urban centre of Perelló."

Student: Moira Burela
Course: Bachelor Degree in Architectural Studies

Sagunto by Blanca Cominges

"Sagunto, Valencia, has been shaped by its proximity to the sea. Trade and industrial activity has influenced its urban morphology and development.

"Seeking to create greater continuity between the city and the sea, this project reimagines the spatial organisation of the harbour. Influenced by Tschumi's framework design, the proposal advocates for a grid of vertical totems. This gives a dimensional and organisational quality to the intervention.

"It also serves as points of reference connected to the city through a set of continuous paths, with a system of platforms providing continuity in two key locations: in Old Nau of Sagunto and by the water's edge."

Student: Blanca Cominges
Course: Bachelor Degree in Architectural Studies

Azúl by Linda El Zaher

"Located in Valencia, Carcaixent's two main commercial hubs are often affected by flooding. The strategy underpinning this project involves interacting with flood water diffusion through a peripheral intervention around the site to slow, store, drain and stop the flow.

"Moving between landscape, hybrid plazas (open reservoirs and public hubs), hybrid pavilions (underground reservoirs and cultural programmes), and hybrid towers (water filtration/storage and residences), the project components are both aquatic and social in nature.

"The design involves reducing the size of existing commercial blocks and expanding its structural grid. Working together, these measures attempt to eliminate danger and improve the surrounding area by integrating social activities, circulation and the local ecology."

Student: Linda El Zaher
Course: Bachelor Degree in Architectural Studies

Jardín Central Sagunto by Sandra García

"This 69-hectare proposal seeks to connect the port and town of Sagunto, Valencia and reintroduce industrial landscape into the city. By creating recycling facilities within a large botanical park, organic, solid and liquid industrial waste will be transformed into fertilizer, clean water, recycled material and energy to power the Jardín Central. This will also support Sagunto in its mission to become Europe's largest industrial park.

"The infrastructure will be complemented by public programmes, which seek to bridge the gap between the separate sections of the municipality. Overall, the proposal acts as a reference point for how 26 other cities across the Mediterranean coast can use productive architecture to boost connection."

Student: Sandra García
Course: Bachelor Degree in Architectural Studies

Boxes: Saturation as a tool for preserving industrial heritage by Ignacio Mejia

"Faced with the dilemma of preservation or urbanisation, Boxes proposes an alternative way of dealing with protected industrial heritage. It creates a means of urbanisation through preservation, with the building and the life within it serving as the principal reason to preserve.

"The perimeter around the heritage site is developed as a hybrid building with a continuous route, along which boxes are articulated. While serving as the organising principle, the route is an ambiguous element with clearly defined boundaries. Without resorting to complex forms, Boxes aims to find richness using simple elements to create new and unexpected experiences."

Student: Ignacio Mejia
Course: Bachelor Degree in Architectural Studies

Form follows Organism by Alejandra Díaz

"With water scarcity and textile disposal on the rise, the project aims to rethink our current relationship with the fashion industry. The proposal centres around the creation of biotextiles using sea-based materials such as red algae, seawater and microalgae.

"These materials can dissolve in seawater and conform to the idea of 'circular fashion' where all the marine-based materials used to make the garments will eventually return to the ocean, without negative consequences.

"The deliverables for the project include a salted bio textiles sample book; a cradle-to-cradle fashion system; and an interlocking modular system that can be scaled up to create garments."

Student: Alejandra Díaz
Course: Bachelor Degree in Design

WelcomPost by Yoko Hwang

"WelcomPost is a system that can be installed in apartments, allowing residents to dispose of organic waste into communal compost bins, called PostUnit. Alongside reducing the energy and costs associated with compost facilities, this solution also turns the waste into a source of biogas energy and compost for plants. WelcomPost has the potential to be implemented across cities worldwide, offering long-term environmental benefits."

Student: Yoko Hwang
Course: Bachelor Degree in Design

Edible Seascapes by Alejandra Alonso Majagranzas

"The effects of climate change and overfishing are putting strain on coastal fishing communities, and we must find alternatives to traditional fishing practices.

"Located in Galicia, A Guarda is a town in Galicia where the past can serve as an inspiration to create solutions for the future. The idea is to create an agricultural system based on seaweed, which can be implemented in as many aspects of personal and communal life as possible."

Student: Alejandra Alonso Majagranzas
Course: Bachelor Degree in Design

Leverage by Anurag Phalke

"The majority of the world is not financially literate. Gaming could help solve this issue. Leverage is a board game based on a volatile stock market scenario, where players must buy stocks at a low price and sell when high.

"During the game, players come to understand how real-life events affect stocks as values can be influenced through 'news' cards, which can benefit your stocks or harm your opponents. The objective is to demonstrate the potential of subliminal education through gamification to tackle society's critical problems."

Student: Anurag Phalke
Course: Bachelor Degree in Design

Alltee by Verus Von Haeften

"Currently, most companies specialising in golf equipment focus on improving performance and the way clubs and balls are packaged has not changed in decades.

"But, because clubs and balls are continuously improved, golfers are compelled to purchase new equipment frequently, which results in a great deal of packaging waste. Alltee is a dual-use golf ball packaging that strives to achieve 100 per cent material efficiency. The package contains three golf balls and 18 tees, which have to be assembled on the go."

Student: Verus Von Haeften
Course: Bachelor Degree in Design

Partnership content

This school show is a partnership between Dezeen and IE University Spain. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.