News

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has declared the construction industry to be responsible for 37% of global CO2 emissions. The fact, a trigger and incentive for transformative shifts in construction and architectural design, has seeded a forward-thinking movement at the center of sustainable innovation.

[This is part I of a two-article series on MEXT and M-ODU. Read the second part here.]

Portugal stands at the forefront of bioarchitecture

In 2025, green tech CoLAB AlmaScience was joined by associate MEXT: Mota-Engil Next, the construction group’s innovation orchestrator, venture builder, and VC investment arm. Together, the two Portuguese companies will promote research and development to challenge the future of construction.

At the intersection, the built environment meets new concepts: the focus of tech labs towards green technology, the hypothesis of biophilia to sustain well-being, and the renewed focus on human-friendly spaces.

Architecture in the rear mirror of a century of urban sprawling

The 20th century was marked by rapid urbanization that brought about an accelerated need for industrial and retail complexes, workspaces, and mass commuting systems, in response to population increase in capital cities following the small-town exodus. Thus, architecture changed focus, scale, and practice altogether. Massive retail spaces and corporate offices demanded mega construction sites that changed the scale and shifted the role of the architect towards mega studios. Case in point: Foster + Partners, from the prolific British architect Norman Foster, still active at 90, counts over 1 500 employees located in offices in multiple cities, including New York City, Hong Kong, and Madrid by 2021. 

Left behind were the flagships of monarchic power or the grandeur of sacred edifices and central squares. These landmarks of historic city centers gave way to highway interchanges and complex urban commuting systems, and mass consumption shifted social interaction from squares to shopping malls. Vertical visions and megastructures sustained daily production with equity as powerful flagships of corporate success.

Housing effectiveness became its trivialization: clusters of condominiums and building blocks rapidly sustained mass migration towards powerful and desirable metropolises. Although private housing seemed to offer a range of options, interior design and color schemes became standardized. New developments intersected with historic areas where renovations of Victorian, Manueline, and Gothic eras would restore the illusion and perfect nostalgia of an often-fantasized epoch.

With urban development, the built environment shaped into rational conglomerates where timing and costs narrowed the offer and, at times, strangled the concept itself. Commissions were coerced by speed and surfaces, with construction techniques that fought back nature rather than working within its oscillations.

Fast-forward to 2020. The aftermath of COVID-19 pointed to the frailty of humans as a collective, of nature when unchecked, of mobility when hieratic, and capitalism itself and its climate change denial started to show its cracks.

An anti-capitalism movement took center stage, bringing climate change, global mobility, fast mass-production, etc. into a centrifuge shake-up that led to an evolutionary thinking where nature and human needs recentered in space. 

Thus, the nature of the questions also changed: could the built environment live within and with an awakened sense of the biosphere to better serve human nature? Could buildings communicate their "health" to occupants, with materials that age well? Could construction firms acknowledge that buildings do operate as living systems with materials borrowed from the natural world rather than processed and inert?

The MEXT: Mota-Engil Next vision

Mota-Engil Group is building Portugal's global infrastructure legacy with sustainability at its core. Its innovation hub, MEXT, serves as “the accelerator of transformation”.

Founded in 1946 in the Portuguese city of Amarante, Mota-Engil has grown from a small family company into Portugal's construction leader with a consolidated position among the 30 largest European construction groups.

Today, the group operates across 28 countries on three continents – Europe, Africa, and Latin America – making it the only Portuguese company in the World Top 100 construction firms.

With approximately 300 companies under its umbrella, Mota-Engil's reach extends far beyond traditional construction. The group specializes in engineering and construction, environmental services, transport concessions, energy, and mining. From iconic projects like Lisbon's Vasco da Gama Bridge – the largest bridge built on the European continent at the time – to the Lobito Atlantic Railway corridor spanning 1 300 km across Angola with extensions into the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mota-Engil delivers infrastructure that shapes communities and connects nations.

Strengthening investment in innovation through MEXT, Mota-Engil is pioneering new construction research and methodologies that rethink how we design and build the cities of tomorrow, moving from concrete and steel alone to comprehensive solutions that prioritize environmental stewardship, social impact, and long-term resilience.

Mota-Engil, with MEXT, has embedded sustainability and innovation into its strategic DNA, targeting reduced carbon emissions, renewable energy integration, and circular economy principles. Carrying forward the responsibility of being Portugal's construction flagship, Mota-Engil aims to redefine what infrastructure means in the 21st century. With demands for smarter and greener infrastructures, the group stands as proof that Portugal's engineering excellence can lead to global transformation. 

MEXT embodies a change in belief system and the collectively felt effective cross-pollination between research centers, business investors, political institutions, and construction stakeholders. It sails away from constructions, hermetically sealing nature out of the equation by making sustainability its focal point, developing synergies in real estate with Emerge, in agroforestry with Mamaland, and in mining with LGM.

AlmaScience: bridging innovation and sustainability

AlmaScience is a collaborative innovation lab with a unique mandate: transforming sustainable functional materials into commercially viable solutions with a multidisciplinary team of over 30 PhDs specializing in chemistry, materials science, electronics, and paper technology.

What distinguishes AlmaScience is not the breadth of its disciplines but the proximity between laboratory and market. AlmaScience transforms natural materials such as cellulose and paper into functional electronic devices using eco-friendly, ultra-low-waste production methods. With sustainable materials and processes to create high-performance paper and biomaterial-based electronics, AlmaScience aligns with MEXT's vision for infrastructure that embraces circular economy principles. These technologies could revolutionize how construction materials interact with their environment through embedded sensors, smart monitoring systems, and biodegradable components.

MEXT and AlmaScience stand side-by-side at the intersection of an evolutionary movement in construction, supporting R&D and creative workflows, with business development and inclusion at its roots.

The data behind the movement

Construction waste crisis. More than 75% of waste generated by the construction sector can be considered valuable but is not being reused or recycled, largely due to the absence of an agreed cohesive waste management framework (Source: Reconomy).

Net-Zero buildings. The energy retrofit market is expected to grow by 8% annually, from $500 billion today to $3.9 trillion in 2050, increasing its share of the overall construction market to almost 25%, up from 5% (Source: McKinsey & Company.

Modular construction growth. The adaptive reuse of buildings reduces embodied carbon by more than 40%, according to the World Green Building Council estimates (Source: Novatr). Modular and prefabricated techniques are accelerating, reducing construction timelines and material waste.

High-end real estate meets bioarchitecture. High-net-worth buyers have driven demand for bioarchitecture in 2025, with eco-conscious features like reclaimed wood, solar energy, and green roofs becoming top priorities as luxury homes increasingly blend elegance with environmental responsibility.

"The luxury real estate market continues to evolve to meet the demands of discerning buyers who value quality of life, natural surroundings, exceptional design, and well-being. Biophilic design and bioarchitecture further enhance this trend by integrating natural elements, fostering a connection to the environment, and promoting eco-conscious living. Leading and emerging destinations like Sardinia, Dubai, and Montenegro showcase wellness villas with wellbeing amenities. This niche is poised for growth in 2025 as demand for health-focused, modern luxury living continues to rise”, says JamesEdition CEO Eric Finnas Dahlstrom in The Luxury Report.

In an era demanding sustainable transformation in Portugal and beyond, Portugal's engineering excellence can meet the need for material science innovation, creating buildings that are not just structures, but living organisms or responsive ecosystems that contribute to, rather than extract from, our planet's resources.

At AlmaScience, we engineer materials the way biology engineers tissue – functional, adaptive, and designed for a defined life cycle. Embedding intelligence into a wall or a floor isn't science fiction anymore; it's the next logical step in making buildings that are honest about their own condition. Working with MEXT means we can take that step at scale.

- Luís Pereira, CTO of AlmaScience

Together, MEXT and AlmaScience can pioneer bioarchitecture and sustainable building solutions that go way beyond traditional construction. Imagine infrastructure embedded with paper-based sensors for real-time structural monitoring, smart packaging concepts applied to construction materials for supply chain transparency, or cellulose-based composites that enhance insulation while reducing carbon footprint…

Construction has always absorbed the best that science can offer - from Roman concrete to reinforced steel. The next frontier is intelligence embedded in the material itself. That is why MEXT joined AlmaScience: to be at the forefront of that shift, not to observe it from the sidelines.

- Sílvia Mota, CEO of MEXT

MEXT joined AlmaScience's Sustainable Innovation Ecosystem in 2025. If your organisation is exploring R&D in sustainable materials, green electronics, or smart infrastructure, discover how the AlmaScience ecosystem works.

The future of infrastructure, architecture, and design leans towards modular architecture, sensory systems, hybrid energy heating, new practices in insulation with natural materials, and the emerging concepts of Neuroarchitecture and Neurosustainability.

Annex & Lexicon

Evolutions in human interconnections, new findings in neuroscience and brain elasticity, green technologies and biophilic design, new agricultural practices, movements in consumption towards slow, independent, and local production systems, healthy food based on nutrients with less food waste, and European restrictions on detrimental packaging are some of the many factors of this wider movement from macro to micro with renewed consciousness.

Biosphere and Biophilic Design form a loop

Bioarchitecture aims to design and construct ecological buildings, creating structures that integrate nature and cyclically mimic climate variations.

Biomimetics: the copying of living nature is “a highly interdisciplinary field, involving the understanding of biological functions, structures and principles of various objects found in nature by scientists” (Source: Royal Society Open Science)

Biophilic design: biophilia incorporates vegetation, natural light, and organic textures into building plans. It is said to enhance productivity by up to 15% and eliminate sick days by almost 20% in offices (Source: Novatr)

Evolution of Digital Technology Integration

BIM (Building Information Modeling): acts as a smart 3D model of a building that contains not just shapes, but data about every component – dimensions, materials, costs, energy performance. Instead of separate drawings for plumbing, electricity, and structure, everything exists in one coordinated digital model. When changing a wall or the electric outlets, cost estimates update automatically.

Neural CAD Foundation Models: is how AI understands architecture and design. Instead of manually drawing every object in Autodesk, type "add a steel I-beam, 6 meters long" and it appears. Or sketch a rough shape of a staircase and it generates a proper architectural staircase. BIM is the ecosystem (the intelligent building model); neural CAD is a new AI-powered entry point into that ecosystem.

The shift provided by AI: machine learning models trained on millions of architectural designs are now fluent in architectural language, standards, and logic. The breakthrough allows creators to focus on design rather than technical execution, leaving behind parametric design used for over forty years to create forms, which used mathematical rules and relationships.

Neuroarchitecture Intersects with Conscious Design

Field Maturation: the 7th biennial ANFA Conference took place in September 2025 at UC San Diego and the Salk Institute, with themes including Climate Change and Sustainable Design, Inclusive Design and Neurodivergence, Health and Well-being, Technology, and Education. Check The Center of Conscious Design.

Research Methodologies: include functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), portable electroencephalograms (EEGs), and mobile brain/body imaging (MoBI), a promising technology gaining recognition in neuroarchitecture for its ability to study neural responses, as researched by Anna Mashchenko in Mindful Space. Design: The Rise of Neuroarchitecture.

Architecture emerges as the predominant field: in neuroarchitecture studies, represented in 14 of the reviewed studies, with disciplines such as psychology, neuroscience, biology, and engineering frequently integrated, reflecting a trend toward interdisciplinary, human-centered, and scientifically informed approaches. Check Exploring Neuroscientific Approaches to Architecture: Design Strategies of the Built Environment for Improving Human Performance.

What Bodies and Buildings Share

The contemporary city scatters in all directions. It is a vast and growing system propelled by the combustive dynamics of fossil fuels. It is an offshoot of the biosphere, made up of all its 8.2 x 10⁹ human constituents, and all that keeps us alive, including domesticated animals and plants, fisheries, plantations, farmland, infrastructure, institutions, energy supplies, global transportation systems, and nature reserves. It is a city enmeshed within a multiplicity of other species’ cities.

HOW HEAVY IS A CITY? | 7th Lisbon Architecture Triennale

An ongoing research field, the built environment integrated within the biosphere and its living organisms, explores what human nature is most inclined to. Bodies, construction, and infrastructure share the same habitat and biosphere with the same need for permeability and adequate barriers.

The skin breathes while protecting, so do the buildings in their interlaced exchange with the environment. Human skin maintains temperature/pH balance autonomously. Similarly, buildings self-regulate through passive and active systems working in tandem. The crucial ability of living organisms to maintain a balanced internal environment is defined as homeostasis.

Just as skin hosts beneficial bacteria, buildings could foster healthy microbial ecosystems* rather than sterile environments—self-healing concrete with bacteria produces limestone, materials that "scar" and strengthen at damage points.

Sensory feedback: membranes or buildings in interaction with living beings and the natural environment they inhabit are the most promising fields of exploration and discovery in the coming years. Without suggesting reenacting the past, these new directions evoke indigenous architectures and vernacular building traditions that embodied this form of skin-like responsiveness, such as thick adobe walls breathing and storing thermal mass or thatched roofs shedding water while insulating.

[This is part I of a two-article series on MEXT and M-ODU. Read the second part here.]