e-cloud9

07/10/2026

Indigenous Futures: “No Blue, No Green”

On Sunday September 20th, coinciding with the start of the Climate Week NYC 2026, I was lucky enough to be invited to the lecture “The Matthiessen Talks: Hope Spots & Hidden Worlds – Humanity’s Place in the Ocean”, and dive into it through the words of “Her Deepness” Dr. Sylvia Earle, in conversation with my dear friend, Dr. Carl Safina.
“Life on Earth has been 4.5 billion years in the making. The oldest animals, whales (30 million years) and sharks (400 million years), deserve our respect and to be treated with dignity”. She is also the author of one of the most important quotes for me: “No blue, no green”.
Dr. Earle spoke about our “superpowers”, the things that make us unique and can be used to help our planet, and about how each individual of any species is equally differentiable and unique. The question we should be asking about other ecosystems and species’ roles is not “how important are you?”, but rather “who are we to answer that?”.
Mission Blue has built a network of 160+ Hope Spots. She presented, alongside Dr. Ellen Pikitch and the Indigenous Advisory Council, the Shinnecock Bay Hope Spot, recognizing the bay’s cultural, ecological and spiritual importance. This initiative aligns with “A walk” with Ann de Forest and our NY Aquarium long-time friend and collaborator, Margie Ruddick of One Landscape. This is a route through the Napeague territory of the Montaukett people, an ephemeral landscape periodically overflowed by the sea, which spanned the eastern tip of Long Island from the current Shinnecock Nation lands in Southampton to Montauk Point, and was gradually eroded by settlers, railroad companies and developers. It aims to highlight the role of Indigenous people on Long Island in educating people on current ways to live more connected to the natural world.
Thanks to the curiosity of ceramist Ellen Braaten, and to the network and intelligence of Robert Reuter and Catherine.
Since my days at AA, where I started the No Blue, No Green studio, into my teaching at Virginia Tech, and with projects such as elBulli1846, we’ve been saying this: “No Blue, No Green”. We hope to be Hope Spot architects as well.

08/09/2026

With this beautiful Nagami piece, we brought the curtain down on our project from last summer’s Biennale Architettura, unEarthed / Second Nature / polliNATION, in collaboration with USM Modular Furniture

In it we addressed the loss of bee populations in Venice’s lagoon. We wanted to highlight the role of pollinators in ecosystem sustainability and in all forms of life evolution.

We are still exploring the evolution of life, and this summer we have been shortlisted for the Bioscope competition with Zoo de Barcelona, a new space for investigation and knowledge, dedicated to the origins of life on Earth.

More to come!

07/07/2026

At Cloud 9 studio, we’ve been building resilience towards climate change since coming across Jeremy Rifkin’s Third Industrial Revolution framework back in 2003. Now we are seeing this change happening in real time.

A building’s first line of defense and climate adaptation is its envelope. A Trombe wall is a passive solar design strategy that uses a thick, dark-colored masonry or concrete wall to absorb solar heat. In Villa Nurbs, we used two layers, one made out of ceramic and one EPDM layer, performing this phenomenon.

The Ceramic Skin (Villa Nurbs, Empuriabrava, 2000-2010) patent features 406 large-format ceramic pieces that utilize high thermal inertia, baking under the intense Mediterranean sun during the day, absorbing the thermal energy so it doesn’t pe*****te into the house, and then slowly releasing it when the temperature drops at night. These pieces were designed digitally (in collaboration with artist Frederic Amat, ceramicist Toni Cumella), and feature a computer-calculated, organic geometry that allows them to function as scales, shading the building when the sun is at its highest point.

It’s suspended on a system of tensioned cables that supports each ceramic piece, allowing for independent movement of each layer of the facade. This suspension of the ceramic skin creates an open air chamber between the scales and the inner wall.

Meteored weather map 7/2/26: https://www.tiempo.com/mapas-meteorologicos/

Toni Cumella Casa Gallego

12/06/2026

Media-ICT model. 2008.

The photoluminescent mineral paint applied to its metallic structure absorbs sunlight during the day and releases it at night, making the building’s skeleton glow in a self-sufficient way.

It’s like a jellyfish!

27/03/2026

Villa Nurbs was born on the ping-pong table in my garage (the biggest table we had to work on).

We were using Autodesk 3ds Max, a software typically used for movie visual effects and 3D animation, not architecture.

When choosing the geometry type, we selected ‘NURBS’: a type of curve that is non-uniform nor rational. It’s the closest we can get to nature.

20/03/2026

Divendres passat vam obrir les portes de la nova oficina Cloud 9

Mil gràcies al Sr. Emili Donato i a tots els que us heu acostat ☁️

C. Cardenal Sentmenat, 37, pb, Sarrià

Sabeu on trobar-nos ;)

05/03/2026

Media-ICT. 22@, Barcelona, Catalonia.
Best Building of the World by WAF 2011.

03/03/2026

elBulli1846. Cala Montjoi, Cap de Creus, Catalonia.

26/02/2026

The Millenium Project. Valladolid, Spain.

25/02/2026