Mar Santamaría took part in the webinar “Madrid 2050: Innovation, Territory, and Participation”, organized by the Official College of Architects of Madrid (COAM), Fundación Juan XXIII, and the Center for Innovation and Circular Economy of Madrid (CIEC). The event served as a platform for reflection on the future of the city from an innovative, participatory, and sustainable perspective. It included discussions on participatory processes, territorial data analysis, and neighborhood-based urban planning. The webinar featured distinguished speakers including: Ángela Baldellou (General Director of COAM), Luis Martín de Ciria (Director of Communication, Institutional Relations, and Social Commitment at CreaMNN), José María Sánchez Laforet (Technical Deputy Director at Sueña Madrid).

On 21 October 2025, the Col·legi d’Arquitectes de Catalunya (COAC) in Barcelona hosted the 4th edition of Descarbonising Architecture, organized by the Architectural Association of Sustainability (AUS). This full-day event explored strategies and tools for advancing decarbonised and resilient architectural practices in response to the climate emergency, with the aim of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. Together with Albert Soret, Director of the Earth System Services Group at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), we delivered a keynote on the climate emergency in Europe. The session presented future climate scenarios derived from large-scale simulations from Impetus4Change Horizon project, illustrating how cities will need to adapt to increasingly extreme conditions in the coming decades.

On 25 January 2025, we took part in the opening of Near Future City (Landscape Architecture Core IV Studio) at Harvard GSD.

During the session On Data Action, we presented our approach to data as a point of view in urban planning, linking it to the idea of landscape as a cultural construction that shapes how we see and understand the world.

We shared a series of projects that explore ways of observing and representing intangible aspects of the environment (such as air, silence, and darkness) using data as a means to reveal hidden conditions and to expand our perception of contemporary urban landscapes.

Couple of intense days at the Smart City World Congress!

Honoured to have participated in the round-table organised by the Observatorio 2030 del CSCAE, which reflected on the impact of digitisation in mobility through our project Embarriados (conducted in collaboration with Fundación Cotec para la Innovación).

Thrilled to have moderated the panel “Reimagining Tomorrow: Cutting-Edge Tech in Urban Design” with Oana Taut (CPO of infrared.city), Steve Zoegall (Vice President and Global Market Director – Cities & Places of Jacobs), Ramon Gras Alomà (CEO & Founder of Aretian Urban Analytics and Design), and Abdulrahman Habib (Deputy Chief Strategy Officer of SDAIA).

Honoured to have joined the Seoul Digital Foundation conference once again as a keynote speaker, alongside Hun-jai Chung (Deputy Mayor of Gangnam-gu), Ane Miren Ibañez Zugazaga (Bilbao City Council), Agnès Charlotte Bickart (Metropolis), and Ahmed T. Abd Elmoeti (Digital Transformation Lead of Aramco).

The event organised by the Senior Group of the Board of Architects of Catalonia focuses on the future metropolitan model of Barcelona. It has explored the new metropolitan urban plan (PDUM) as a successor to the 50-year-old General Metropolitan Plan (PGM), addressing key aspects like governance, planning, financing, and management. The session was divided into two parts. Mar Santamaria together with Pere Montaña, moderated the first session discussing the morphological and physiological aspects of the PDUM. The second part addressed the governance and social dimensions of the plan. Various experts will participate, including geographers, architects, and economists.

The "IA Lab COAM" is an experimental space launched by the Board of Architects of Madrid to explore the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on architecture. It aims to lead discussions on how AI can transform creative processes and enhance the ethical, economic, social, and environmental aspects of the profession. Mar Santamaria has participated in a round table moderated by Inés Leal, together with other architects and industry experts.

Mar Santamaria was the keynote speaker in the II Jornada Viladecans 2030 "Intermediate city, Necessary Cities" (15 October 2024). This event focuses on the importance of intermediate cities in sustainable development. It offers three thematic tracks: communication for innovation via the 2030 Agenda, urban governance in medium-sized cities, and designing future streets. The event includes roundtables, workshops, and closing discussions, and features experts from public administration, urban planning, and future studies. The goal is to promote collaborative governance and innovative urban planning aligned with sustainability goals.

On 21 September 2024, Mar Santamaría took part in the participatory conference 'The Future of Rivers' in Terrassa, organised by the Terrassa Higher School of Industrial, Aerospace and Audiovisual Engineering in order to communicate the value of the rieras as a structuring element of the territory. The co-founder of 300,000km/s gave a lecture entitled 'Drawing cities, drawing futures', in which she addressed, among other things, how to see and draw the city in order to achieve more human urban environments that promote the mixture and multiplication of urbanity.

This week we had the pleasure of participating in the presentation of a key piece of work for urban agendas in Spain in the coming years.

The report, developed by the Spanish Council of Architects’ Associations together with the professional group forming the Urban Regeneration Working Group, aims to establish consensus among sector professionals on the definition, evaluation, benefits, phases, and stakeholders involved in regeneration projects. The document is intended to provide support and guidance for administrations initiating these processes for the first time, and to assist those already engaged in addressing strategic uncertainties they may encounter.

With Spain facing the challenge of an aging housing stock, there is a pressing need to update urban fabrics collaboratively with the residents who inhabit and care for them. This transformation aims not only to adapt to climate change but also to foster a more equitable society, ensuring regeneration reaches every corner. Accelerating the transformation and adaptation of our municipalities is urgent. We have successful case studies to learn from, data to inform decisions, and identified challenges to improve our legal framework and financing instruments. We have the necessary components; now we must synchronize their efforts.

300,000Km/s has been involved in the final stages of this report, integrating diverse perspectives, providing and supplementing information as guided by the expert committee, and ensuring the document represents all stakeholders comprehensively and cohesively. We contributed data and case studies, and visually enhanced key content. Above all, we have taken pride in shaping this publication, which we hope will contribute to tackling one of the most significant challenges in the years ahead.

The report is available for download on the CSCAE website:
https://lnkd.in/dX6fXkGA

On Monday, April 29th, at the Argiletum headquarters on Via della Madonna dei Monti 40, DIPARTIMENTO DI ARCHITETTURA ROMA TRE, as part of the series of meetings for the PhD program "architecture, city, landscape," Mar Santamaria Varas and Pablo Martinez Diez gave a lecture titled "The Invisible Cities," to discuss methods of narration/description and urban projects.