Professor Maria-Paz Gutierrez (Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley)
Gutierrrez investigation centres on the role of material invention and craft for addressing critical socioeconomic and environmental urban and rural challenges of the 21st century. Her design explores integrative approaches in material invention pertaining to cultural and biophysical paradigms of natural and human resources particularly in settings under risk. In 2008 Gutierrez founded BIOMS, an interdisciplinary research group with support from organizations such as NSF, EPA and DOE.
Gutierrez is recipient of numerous design and interdisciplinary awards including the 2001 AIA Academic Medal, the 2011 Evolo International Competition Finalist and semifinalist for the 2014 Buckminster Fuller Award. Her teaching innovation has been recognized both by academia and industry through the 2010 Blue Award, the 2011 Sarlo Distinguished Mentorship Award, 2011 Bentley Innovation Award and more recently the
2013 Odebrecht Sustainability Innovation Second Prize award (co-advisor). Gutierrez is the sole architect recipient of the prestigious 2010 National Science Foundation - Emerging Frontiers of Innovation Award. She is a 2011 Fulbright Nexus Scholar and appointed Senior Fellow of the Energy Climate Partnership of the Americas by the US Dept. of State. Gutierrez’s research has been published in prominent architectural and scientific journals including Science, ARQ Cambridge and her design creations have been displayed in venues such as the Field Museum in Chicago. Her forthcoming book “Regeneration Wall” (Routledge
2017) discusses how our conceptualization and materialization of the wall is bound to radically change from the rise of multifunctional matter. Gutierrez has two provisional patents.