Associate Professor of Architecture and Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Michigan
About
María Arquero de Alarcón is an associate professor of architecture and urban and regional planning and the director of the master of urban design at the University of Michigan Taubman College. Operating at the intersection of architecture, landscape, and urbanism, her work integrates design strategies promoting cultural and environmental values in the urban sustainability agenda. María leads MAde Studio, a research-based, collaborative design practice. Through a combination of grant-funded research initiatives, urban design experimentation, and site-specific built interventions, MAde Studio’s work advances design approaches integrating the knowledge co-generated with local partners and collaborators.
Her work is published in the edited volumes The Third Coast Atlas: Prelude to a Plan of the Great Lakes Region and Mapping Detroit: Land, Community, and Shaping a City; Michigan Journal of Sustainability; Architect Magazine’s “Next Progressives;” PLOT; Green and Building Design; International Journal of Transportation; Journal of Transportation Planning and Technology and UHF. The work has also been exhibited in the 2017 Shenzhen-Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism, the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, the University of Tennessee, the University of Minnesota and the University of Michigan. María holds an architecture professional degree (Madrid Polytechnic University), a master of advanced studies in landscape architecture (E.T.H. Zurich), and a master of landscape architecture in urban design (Harvard University).
Current Work:
My current research examine the impact of disparate dynamics of urbanization in the territory and the role of the different urban agents in devising more just and better futures. I will mention two current projects to illustrate these larger research agenda. In the first case, we are investigating the conflicts between housing and environmental constitutional rights in informal areas in São Paulo, Brazil. Working with our local partners from Gaspar Garcia Center for Human Rights and LabJUTA at the Federal University ABC, we examine the socio-spatial and environmental transformations in the city's periphery, and the role of urbanists and the legal system managing and mediating them. In the case of Detroit, our work looks at the areas in the city with higher rates of vacant land and reveals the disparate visions around future city making. Here too, we look at the role of different urban actors driving change and stewarding place.
Research Area Keyword(s):
Urban sustainability, landscape and architecture design
