Maria Paz Gutierrez

Natural and living Materials and 3D Printing Innovation; Multiscale Design and engineering; Water, and Air Regeneration and Indoor Microbiomes.

Professor Gutierrez is  an innovator in the intersection of architecture and materials engineering and science exploring materials invention from the nano to the building scale. In 2008 she founded her research group BIOMS that has collaborated focused on transforming natural materials multifunctional capacities at the intersection of energy-water-air and culture. Gutierrez’s research and design has been featured in leading scientific and architectural, and public forums including Science Nation and the BBC and recipient of various design awards including the the ACSA Creative Achievement Award, Evolo Skyscraper (Detox Towers) and a semifinalist of the most prestigious award in sustainability design innovation – Buckminster Fuller Award. She is also recipient of various national and international teaching awards including the Sarlo Distinguished Mentorship and the Blue Award at UT Vienna.

Gutierrez has developed extensive fieldwork in the Americas on advancing sustainability, health, and equity in construction innovation in remote zones as the Northwestern Amazon  including through her leadership as Senior Fellow for the Energy Climate Partnership of the Americas (2011-16). Her most recent research and design is focusing on plant and wood composites with multifunctional capacity for flood resilience and the democratization of 3D printing in remote regions including design-built work in the Amazon and low cost microengineered lichen blocks for air detoxification.  Gutierrez is a Bakar Fellow 2020-22, Fulbright Fellow and the only architect to receive as lead PI the prestigious Emerging Frontiers of Innovation Award by the US National Science Foundation. Professor Gutierrez’s award-winning research has been published in the most prestigious scientific journals including Science and Nature and exhibited internationally in biennials and museums including the Oslo Architectural Triennale.

Gutierrez is a Bakar Fellow for her research in engineered lichen blocks and the RIBA 2020 President's Medal of Research Award (Climate Change/shortlisted). She has two forthcoming books Regeneration Wall (2021 Routledge) and The Forest, The Fields, 3D Printing Now and Then (2023, Cambridge Scholars), and two provisional patents on 3D printing innovation.

Gutierrez, Maria Paz. "The Northwestern Amazon malocas: Craft now and then." Journal of Material Culture 25, no. 1 (2020): 3-35.

Gutierrez, Maria Paz, and Luke P. Lee. "Multiscale design and integration of sustainable building functions." Science 341, no. 6143 (2013): 247-248.

Gutierrez, Maria Paz, and Tarek I. Zohdi. "Effective reflectivity and heat generation in sucrose and PMMA mixtures." Energy and buildings 71 (2014): 95-103.

Gutierrez, Maria Paz. "Floods: Shaping Resilient Emergency Relief Housing." Journal of Architectural And Planning Research", 34, no. 3 (2017): 236-270.

Gutierrez, Maria Paz. "Material Alignments." Technology| Architecture+ Design 5, no. 1 (2021): 115-118.

Gutierrez, Maria-Paz. "Reorienting innovation: transdisciplinary research and building technology." Arq: Architectural Research Quarterly 18, no. 1 (2014): 69.

Gutierrez, M.P., 2016. Lab in the Building/Building in the Lab?: Pluripotent Matter & Bioinspiration.

Park, Younggeun, Maria Paz Gutierrez, and Luke P. Lee. "Reversible self-actuated thermo-responsive pore membrane." Scientific Reports 6, no. 1 (2016): 1-10.