In an era when artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming our relationship with design, the 13th Barcelona International Landscape Biennial raises a question that is both interrogative and exclamatory: “Natural Intelligence?!”. This provocative theme invites us to look beyond the binary of natural versus artificial, encouraging exploration of the rich ecosystem of intelligences that shape our landscapes-a territory where computation meets botany, where indigenous wisdom converses with algorithmic learning, and where art serves as a translator between ways of knowing that might otherwise remain disconnected.
The intentional tension in “Natural Intelligence?!” captures the spirit of our contemporary moment-a time of both questioning and revelation. What might we discover if we expand our understanding of intelligence beyond the human and the machine to include the vast commonwealth of life around us? How might our practice evolve if we recognize that intelligence is not merely something we possess or create, but something in which we are “inextricably entangled and suffused” (Bridle, 2023)?
Consider the paradox of measurement: the more precisely we try to quantify certain aspects of landscapes, the more some qualities elude observation. This tension between the measurable and the ineffable lies at the heart of landscape architecture’s relationship with technology. Our most sophisticated AI tools reveal certain patterns while obscuring others that remain experiential, embodied, and resistant to algorithmic understanding. This is not a failure of technology, but rather a call for multiple modes of knowing-each with its own strengths and limitations.
As Woltz (2022) notes, “the land is full-full of stories, meanings, and memories that inform our relationship to place.” These narratives remain embedded in the landscape itself, waiting to be discovered through careful observation and respectful engagement. This understanding positions landscape architecture not merely as a technical discipline, but as a practice of translation-revealing the multiple intelligences already inscribed in our environments.
Indigenous knowledge systems further expand our conception of intelligence by demonstrating how communities develop intimate, generational understandings of ecological patterns (Shah, 2024). These perspectives challenge dominant knowledge frameworks by reframing environments as integrated cultural-ecological ‘biomes’ where “forests, monsoons, and mountains are key mediators” in a community’s cosmology.
The plant world itself offers a particularly illuminating model for reimagining intelligence. Comprising 99.7% of Earth’s biomass, plants have developed sophisticated problem-solving capacities without centralized neural systems (Mancuso, 2024). They communicate through mycorrhizal networks, memorize experiences, make decisions, and adapt to changing conditions through distributed intelligence rather than hierarchical processing. This decentralized approach to knowledge-making suggests alternatives to both human-centered and machine-centered paradigms-a third way that might inform how we integrate AI into landscape practice without abandoning the profession’s deeply relational foundation.
How do we perceive and interact with forms of intelligence that operate on radically different scales and temporalities than our own? Here, artistic practice becomes essential. Visual arts and experimental animation offer unique tools for making visible the invisible intelligences that surround us. A new generation of artists/programmers reflects on how “generative AI is a mirror, more or less realistic, more or less distorted, of what we ask it to imitate; an analysis of the dataset with which it has been trained. [...] In imitation appears analysis, the reflective gaze of the mirror, and sometimes the surprise of unexpected combinations, perhaps plausible, perhaps incongruent” (Estampa, 2023). Through creative visualization, we can render perceptible the subtle communications between plants, the complex algorithms driving machine learning, or the ecological knowledge embedded in cultural practices. Art functions not merely as illustration but as a form of intelligence itself-one that bridges conceptual gaps between other ways of knowing.
The implications for landscape architecture are profound. Practitioners are positioned not as singular geniuses imposing vision upon passive nature, but as facilitators of conversations between different intelligences-creating spaces where human innovation, technological capability, ecological wisdom, and cultural knowledge can coexist and amplify each other’s strengths. This approach creates “a social ecology that prefigures yet more possibility for the emergence of rich ways of knowing and making that are geared towards planetary flourishing” (Timmerman, 2017).
The 13th Barcelona International Landscape Biennial thus positions itself at the frontier of a new paradigm-one that embraces natural intelligence not in opposition to artificial intelligence, but as part of a continuum of ways of knowing that can inform and enrich each other. Through exhibitions, prizes, and symposia, the Biennial creates spaces for practitioners, academics, and students to explore this complex territory with sensitivity and vision-developing approaches that amplify rather than override the multitude of intelligences already present in our landscapes.
Ultimately, “Natural Intelligence?!” is not merely a theme but an invitation-to expand our understanding beyond familiar dichotomies, to recognize intelligence in its many forms, and to create landscapes that honor the wisdom of trees, soil, water systems, indigenous communities, and technological innovation. It challenges us to develop landscape practices that are simultaneously humble and ambitious: humble in recognizing the profound intelligence already present in natural systems, and ambitious in our vision of how landscape architecture might facilitate new relationships between these diverse ways of knowing.
