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Barcelona MicroBioMap

Mapping urban life beyond the human

Barcelona MicroBioMap is an interdisciplinary urban microbiome research project centred on Barcelona. It brings together expertise in complex systems, public health, microbial ecology and open civic technology to investigate the microorganisms that inhabit the city’s air, soils, leaves, dust and public surfaces. The project treats the city not only as built form and infrastructure, but as a living ecological system shaped by human and non-human relations alike. In that sense, it anticipated later debates on more-than-human design by asking how urban life might be understood through forms of coexistence that remain largely invisible in planning. Its relevance lies in making this microbial dimension legible, not as a scientific curiosity alone, but as part of the ecological conditions that structure health, biodiversity and everyday urban life.

The Project

The project was structured around a city-wide sampling campaign and a subsequent molecular and analytical workflow. While the initial proposal envisioned 100 sites, the documented fieldwork was carried out across 50 locations in Barcelona, including 40 urban sites and 10 green-area sites. Site selection considered population density, vehicle circulation, district coverage, proximity to schools and parks, air-quality monitoring stations, urban form and distance to the sea. Samples included air, soil, leaf and dust material, collected during two campaigns in 2020: a summer campaign from 24 July to 3 August and an autumn campaign from 1 to 11 December. In total, around 520 samples were generated. The laboratory work involved tailored extraction methods for different materials, followed by sequencing and ecological analysis. Beyond describing microbial diversity, the project opened a way of reading the city as a multispecies environment, where public space, vegetation, atmosphere and built surfaces are all part of a shared ecological assemblage.

Our Contribution

Fab Lab Barcelona acted as the project’s technical and public-facing partner, with a role focused on open dissemination infrastructure and the translation of scientific research into accessible civic tools. Its most concrete contribution was the development of the Barcelona MicroBioMap platform, an open visual interface that enables users to explore sampling points across the city and filter data by season and surface type. This made the project legible beyond the laboratory, turning sequencing results into a form of public urban knowledge.

This role was grounded in Fab Lab Barcelona’s longer trajectory in environmental monitoring, citizen science and open-source infrastructures. The proposal explicitly connects the lab’s contribution to its experience with Smart Citizen and related initiatives such as the European projects Making Sense, iSCAPE, Organicity and GROW Observatory, which explored new ways for communities to understand and act upon their environments. Fab Lab Barcelona brought that experience into the project by building the bridge between scientific research and public accessibility.

Seen from today, Barcelona MicroBioMap also stands out as an early and unusually distinct example of how Fab Lab Barcelona was already working at the intersection of environmental science, open technological systems and more experimental approaches to living with other species in the city. Without overstating its claims, the project positioned the lab as an early actor in connecting urban science with a more-than-human design sensibility, one that understands cities as shared habitats rather than exclusively human systems.

Who is it for?

Researchers and public health practitioners: people working on microbiomes, environmental exposure, ecology and urban health.

Urban planners and public institutions: actors concerned with green infrastructure, school environments, pollution and evidence-based urban policy.

Educators, schools and citizen science communities: groups interested in understanding the city through open, accessible environmental knowledge.

Barcelona residents and the wider public: people who can use the platform to explore the city as a living microbial ecosystem rather than only as physical infrastructure.

Local pilot or case study

Barcelona functioned as the project’s full-scale urban case study. The field campaign was distributed across 50 sampling locations, including dense urban settings and green areas, in order to capture variation in pollution, morphology, vegetation, public facilities and other urban conditions. This made the city itself the project’s testbed. The local dimension was especially important because the research sought to understand how microbial communities differ across neighbourhoods, surfaces and seasons, and how those differences might inform future decisions about planting, school environments, green infrastructure and environmental health. At the same time, the project suggested another way of seeing Barcelona, as a shared habitat composed not only of human activity and infrastructure, but also of microbial lives that participate in the city’s ecological balance.

Tools and Framework

The project combines three operational layers.

First, a distributed field-sampling framework organised around multiple urban conditions and seasonal comparison.

Second, a molecular and ecological analysis workflow involving DNA extraction, sequencing, ecological modelling and network analysis across heterogeneous sample types such as soil, leaf surfaces, dust and air samples.

Third, the Barcelona MicroBioMap platform developed by Fab Lab Barcelona. The platform allows users to navigate sampling points, compare seasons and surface types, and explore the city’s microbiome through an accessible public interface. According to the proposal materials, this platform was conceived as part of a broader open infrastructure approach linked to downloadable data and open-source development.

Outputs and results

• A documented field campaign across 50 sampling locations in Barcelona, including 40 urban sites and 10 green-area sites.
• Two seasonal sampling campaigns in 2020, generating approximately 520 samples in total.
• A structured sampling protocol covering air, soil, leaf and dust samples across different urban conditions.
• A laboratory workflow adapted to heterogeneous urban sample types, including distinct extraction methods and processing procedures.
• The public-facing Barcelona MicroBioMap platform, allowing interactive exploration of sampling locations, seasons and surface types.
• A research and policy framing that positions the urban microbiome as relevant to public health, planting strategies, school environments, green infrastructure and more-than-human forms of urban design.

Project lead by Núria Conde, faculty at the Master in Design for Emergent Futures, explore more-than-human design through the microbial life of the city