Faculty Directory

Jen Maigret is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Taubman College at the University of Michigan where she teaches design studios, construction and co-teaches an interdisciplinary seminar that bridges GIS, digital modeling and visualization techniques toward new models of architectural and regional planning practices that foster relationships between environmental processes and the design of the built environment. Maigret holds a B.A. in Biology from Hartwick College, a M.S. in Ecology, Evolutionary and Organismal Biology from the University of Michigan and a M.Arch from the University of Michigan. Maigret has taught previously as a Weese Fellow and Assistant Professor at Washington University in Saint Louis. She is a licensed architect in the State of Michigan, a partner in the research-based practice MAde-studio and a co-founder of the design research collective, Metropolitan Futures Group (MFG). MFG was established to address the problem of the notable absence of design in policy processes that affect the organization, form and materiality of constructed environments, and, therefore, issues concerning quality of life.

Assistant Professor Maigret's initial education and professional experience within the field of biology informs her current interests in exploring architecture as a component of broader environmental and cultural systems. Her design research and practice engages the generative potential of complex, environmental systems related to the material, cultural and formal expression of architecture. In particular, her work invests in nuanced understandings of larger, macro-scaled systems to visualize and materialize new sets of formal relations that participate in dynamic environments. Her work ranges in scope and scale, from the visualization of water dynamics throughout the Great Lakes watershed basin to a design build construction that interrogates the material and assembly practices of a hoophouse through the lens of water. She has presented her work at numerous, international and national peer reviewed academic conferences and is a participant in a number of ongoing, funded projects tied to community development design work.

Maigret is a founding partner, with Maria Arquero, of MAde-studio LLC, a research-based design practice focused on the development of environmentally and culturally sound architecture and urban design practices. MAde-studio was initiated as a trans-disciplinary, collaborative practice that offers disciplinary expertise in architecture, landscape architecture, urban design and urban planning. MAde has garnered recognition with an ACSA Faculty Design Award (Liquid Planning Detroit) for the development of design proposals that contribute to innovations in green infrastructure in Detroit and two AIA Michigan Design Awards for A Dozen Playgrounds (a design proposal that recuperates playgrounds as space for children, central to the living fabric of the city) and Eastside Recreation Center (an interdisciplinary urban strategy to establish major design parameters for a recreation center on a site on the Huron River, immediately adjacent to downtown Ypsilanti, Michigan).