The paper addresses the shift in architectural education regarding the need to develop new approaches in teaching methodology, improve curricula, and make advancements in new learning arenas and digital environments. The research is based on the assumption that online workshops could offer a unique learning experience for students in higher education. Accordingly, workshops are considered an essential element in teaching emergency design. As a result, this can produce broader and more innovative solutions to COVID-19 challenges regarding social distancing, limited movements, regulated use of public space, and suspended daily activities. The theoretical notions of emergency design and education for sustainable design enabled the identification of research perspectives and spatial levels to be taken as a starting point of the workshop “COVID-19 Challenges: Architecture of Pandemic” that was conducted by the University of Belgrade—Faculty of Architecture in April 2020. The critical review of the workshop’s procedural and substantial aspects led to identifying four main COVID-19 design challenges perceived in performance, innovation, alteration, and inclusion. Additionally, the paper’s findings concern the identification of learning potentials and limitations arising from a current topic affecting global society, for which neither solutions nor adequate answers in the field of architecture and urbanism have been found.

Terram Intelligere – Interstitium, Montenegro’s contribution to the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia is presented as a case study in exploring cross-scalar, interdisciplinary architectural thinking. Rooted in the culturally and historically charged concept of međa — the dry-stone boundary lines that traverse the Montenegrin landscape — the project is both an artistic and scientific inquiry into how architecture can learn from the intelligence of natural-cultural landscapes and their living systems. Developed in partnership with the University of Belgrade – Institute of Molecular Genetics and Genetic Engineering (UB – IMGGE), through collaboration among architects, microbiologists, visual artists, and designers, the project revolves around cultivating native Montenegrin bacteria that produce bio-pigments, nanocellulose, and bioplastics. These natural production processes, that are ordinarily invisible and often overlooked, come into focus through the modulation of space, light, and sound within the exhibition venue. The result is an installation that does not merely represent a landscape, but performs as one, showcasing ongoing material transformation. Situated between micro (biological) and macro (territorial) scales, Interstitium pursues a methodology of translation across spatial systems (from landscape to gallery space), material processes (from microbial life to architectural gestures), and discursive frameworks (from scientific observation to artistic expression), while asking: Which new forms of disciplinary cooperation could emerge when the boundaries between architecture, biology, and art are deliberately blurred? Could architecture operate across scales, as a medium that not only detects but also interprets, and materially articulates the intelligence of other species? Could architecture also become a platform for dismantling human dominance over the planet while imagining the future as a space of coexistence, attunement and shared agency? By focusing on the interstitial — what exists between scales, species, and disciplines — this project proposes a shift in architectural thinking: from mastering complexity to listening and attuning to it. This shift resonates with current discussions on interdisciplinary cooperation, situated design practices, and architecture’s ever evolving role as a mediator between human and nonhuman worlds.