NBS provides the technical basis for adaptation to climate change, and co-creation is the vehicle for the co-production of knowledge and innovation, both forming a strong binomial for the UE Green Infrastructures Strategy. Nonetheless, one of the main challenges for the implementation of effective co-creation strategies is the incorporation of knowledge from diverse social systems. Knowledge production has been approached through different methodological models, such as the quintuple helix innovation by Carayannis, or the diffuse/expert knowledge model by Manzini. These theoretical models are based on linear knowledge transfers, without sufficiently depicting alternative knowledge flows among (un)conventional actors. In view of these limitations, the research proposes a third strategy: the KREBS cycle of creativity defined by Oxman is a conceptual map capable of describing knowledge transfers across the four modalities of human creativity (i.e., science, engineering, design, and art). Providing sufficient “creative energy” in a co-creation process would guarantee the successful production of knowledge. Thus, the research seeks to illuminate different co-creation strategies to promote “creative energy” in the design of the Cyborg Garden (CG) in Madrid, giving a novel application to Oxman’s methodological framework based on the Carayannis’s and Manzini’s models.

Urban decarbonisation requires governance models that overcome the fragmentation and rigidity of traditional urban planning. This article presents a systemic and digital framework for managing urban decarbonisation portfolios aligned with the EU Mission for Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities. Grounded in systems thinking and portfolio theory, this study develops an analytical taxonomy and an interactive digital tool to support strategic coordination, multistakeholder collaboration, and adaptive decision-making. The framework is empirically validated through the case of Madrid’s Climate City Contract, demonstrating its functionality and transferability. Using a mixed-method approach—combining co-creation workshops, interviews, document analysis, and iterative prototyping—this research maps interdependencies among projects, actors, and levers of change. The digital tool enables real-time visualisation of collaboration patterns, gaps, and synergies, enhancing strategic foresight and coordination capacity. Findings reveal that 75% of initiatives in Madrid’s CCC address climate adaptation, 80.36% are linked to knowledge generation, and key anchor projects serve as integrative hubs within the portfolio. This study concludes that the portfolio approach strengthens systemic innovation and reflexive governance by integrating digital infrastructures with collaborative planning processes. While challenges persist—including data integration, institutional capacity, and political dynamics—this research offers a replicable methodology for embedding mission-oriented strategies into urban governance. The digital portfolio emerges as a complementary governance tool that enhances transparency, organisational learning, and alignment across governance levels.

Nature-Based Solutions are defined as infrastructures or systems which are inspired by, supported by, or copied from nature. This biophilic leitmotif has rapidly permeated and been prescribed in many fields, particularly in urban and architectural design, stimulating an invasion of green rhetorics not necessarily founded on genuine ecological performing. In this context, this article explores current gaps in the epistemology and rhetorics of NBS, expanding the field with alternative narratives such as cycle-based design and micro-scalar or process-oriented approaches. The concept of redundancy is here presented as a non-observable, still nature-based principle, already applied in disparate scientific fields such as information theory, cybernetics, or evolutionary biology, and introduced in design fields from a theoretical perspective. Novel applicability of the term will be articulated from design perspectives through various case studies, using a multi-scalar scope and concluding in a tentative taxonomy. Redundancy entails a shift from grammar-based to syntax-based design logics. Morphological redundancy is presented as an upgrade of NBS rhetorics, delivering a more advanced understanding of the hidden choreographies of nature.

Numerosos organismos internacionales han resaltado la urgencia e importancia de una educación para la sostenibilidad en todos los ámbitos educativos y especialmente en el universitario (Aznar et al. 2010). Sus profundos efectos sobre las áreas de conocimiento relacionadas con la creatividad aplicada precisan de una fuerte renovación pedagógica, que las actuales estructuras académicas politécnicas pueden encajar con dificultad. Frente a la mirada focal de la didáctica clásica, esta pedagogía requiere la ejercitación de la mirada periférica propia de un nuevo contexto centrífugo. Debemos rediseñar una herramienta que permita superar la “falacia mecanicista” sostenida por la disciplina durante todo el siglo pasado y que ha consolidado la separación de las ciencias ambientales respecto del diseño arquitectónico (Roaf y Bairstow 2008: 4). Numerous international organizations have highlighted the urgency and importance of education for sustainability in all areas of education, especially at university (Aznar et al. 2010). Its effects on knowledge areas related to applied creativity require a strong educational reform, which current Polytechnic academic structures can match up with difficulty. Against the focal view of classical didactic, this pedagogy requires a training on peripheral view towards a new centrifugal context. We should envisage a tool to overcome the "mechanistic fallacy" sustained by the discipline over the last century, which has consolidated the separation of environmental science from architectural design (Roaf and Bairstow 2008: 4).

Being the Digital Revolution over the Twentieth century, locative media technology geolocates the digital layer strives to build the augmented city, whose access and perception by citizens is produced through electronic devices across a highly interactive communication model, where the concept of fourth wall is critical. In view of the technological determinism enhanced in hyperconnected societies, this research focuses on the nature of the fourth wall, denying some technological aspects that have been presented as pioneer. Here we show how the topology of this element is analogous to certain episodes that happened in the field of the arts. As analogical precedents, the baroque scenographies of Giovanni Battista Aleotti and Vicenzo Scamozzi are rescued as they broke the fourth wall by redefining the limit between fiction and reality, which in terms of augmented environments becomes the edge between digital and physical domain.

Contemporáneamente al nacimiento del rascacielos, el edificio híbrido se vincula a una práctica experimental y en cierto modo disidente de la disciplina. Los volúmenes puros de la Modernidad serán sometidos a una diagnosis crítica: primero de orden programático –mixed-use–, luego estructural y por último ambiental y ecológica. Estas revisiones, en especial la ecológica, comprometerán también la definición de su contexto urbano, proponiendo con ello modelos de ciudad alternativos. Algunos de ellos anticipan la agenda que centrará la producción arquitectónica y urbana de la contemporaneidad más comprometida.