Intelligent Ecologies in Architecture: From Traditional Ecological Knowledge to Circular Design

The accelerating climate crisis and resource depletion demand new architectural paradigms that move beyond linear models of production and consumption. While the concept of Intelligent Ecologies is often associated with digital and artificial intelligence systems, this study reinterprets it through the lens of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), vernacular architecture, and constraint-based innovation. Grounded in a critical reading of key references in ecological knowledge, vernacular studies, circular economy theory, and responsible innovation, the paper develops a conceptual framework tracing a trajectory from TEK to adaptive and circular design. Two architectural case studies, the ARCò kindergarten in Sant’Alessio (biological cycle) and the Parabase Elementa housing project in Basel (technical cycle), are analysed to demonstrate how natural and collective intelligence can be operationalised in contemporary practice. The findings show that circularity emerges not as an added sustainability layer but as the logical outcome of design under ecological and material constraints. The study concludes that Intelligent Ecologies should be understood as socio-ecological systems in which architecture participates in living processes through adaptive, regenerative, and temporally open strategies, thereby repositioning innovation as continuity with historically embedded forms of ecological intelligence rather than technological rupture.