Eco-design aims to enhance eco-engineering practices of coastal infrastructure projects in support of ecological functions before these projects are developed and implemented. The principle is to integrate eco-engineering concepts in the early phases of project design. Although ecological losses are inherent in any construction project, the goal of eco-design is to introduce environmental considerations upfront during technical design choices, and not just afterwards when evaluating the need for reduction or compensatory mitigation. It seeks to reduce the negative impacts of marine infrastructure by introducing a new reflexive civil engineering approach. It requires a valuation of nature with the aim of reducing impacts by incorporating intelligent design and habitatcentered construction. The principle advocated in this paper is to design coastal infrastructures, at micro-to macro-biological scales, using a combination of fine and large scale physical and chemical modifications to hard substrates, within the scope of civil engineering requirements. To this end, we provide a brief introduction to the factors involved in concrete-biota interactions and propose several recommendations as a basis to integrate ecology into civil engineering projects, specifically addressed to concrete. 'coastal squeeze', a term introduced by Doody (2004) in recognition of the threat to the existence of coastal habitats caused by the compound impacts of sea-level rise and human activities. The phenomenon is very prominent in developed countries (INSEE, 2013) such as Spain, Italy, Belgium, Japan, China, and the USA, but it is also becoming more prominent in the developing world (e.g., Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines, Myanmar, India and Indonesia) (Phan et al., 2014). It develops rapidly, especially in a context of emergency poverty alleviation and economic development where environmental governance is weak. Around the Mediterranean, urbanization increased from 54% to 66% between 1970 and 2006 (Halpern et al., 2008). Furthermore, the situation is likely to worsen; the world's population is forecast to