The implications of speculative and material design narratives in socio-ecological metabolisms. A practice-led study.

The interactions between humans and natural environments award identity to communities, build heritage, and project futures. However, they can also lead to unsettling scenarios. This research explores speculative and material design narratives as tools for creating sustainable future alternatives for socio-ecological metabolisms (i.e., the flow of resources between nature and society). The cultural and contextual component of these interplays, along with the complexity of socio-ecological systems nowadays, led to reducing the scope to a specific geographic area. This is the Mar Menor ecosystem in Spain, and the findings aim to be transferrable to other cases.