Integration of biodiversity into urban development: adaptive façades for climate resilience

The contemporary climate and biodiversity crises necessitate a reconfiguration of the built environment, positioning adaptive façades as critical infrastructures for resilience, decarbonisation, and ecologica regeneration. This paper investigates the architectural and technological potential of façades conceived according to circular and biodiversity-oriented principles, integrating ecosystem functions into building envelopes. A systematic literature review, combined with a typological–functional analysis of biointegrated systems either commercially available or under development, highlights opportunities to establish new paradigms of façade adaptivity that move beyond conventional active–passive classifications. Emerging material systems are examined, with particular focus on microalgae photobioreactors, self-healing and bioreceptive concretes, mycelium-based composites, and cyanobacteria-derived structures, each assessed in relation to environmental impacts and scalability. The research advances a methodological framework that integrates multiobjective simulations, digital traceability, and IoT-based monitoring within a multicriteria evaluation matrix anchored to ISO/EN standards, addressing urban heat-island mitigation, biodiversity enhancement, and material circularity. Findings underscore both the potential and limitations of current prototypes: while photobioreactors demonstrate feasibility at pilot scale, other bioactive materials remain experimental, preventing reliable extrapolation to large-scale applications. The study concludes by framing adaptive façades as socio-ecological infrastructures that couple mitigation with adaptation, align architectural innovation with regenerative design, and contribute to European objectives for 2030 and 2050 in urban biodiversity restoration.