María Arquero de Alarcón is an associate professor of architecture and urban and regional planning at the University of Michigan Taubman College. Her work advances urban strategies promoting cultural and environmental values in territories under conditions of scarcity. María leads MAde Studio, a research-based, collaborative design practice that offers integrated expertise in architecture, landscape, and urbanism. Through a combination of grant-funded research initiatives, urban design experimentation, and site-specific interventions, MAde Studio focuses on the co-generation of socio-spatial strategies addressing urban transformation in collaboration with local partners and residents. Her design and research has been recognized with an ACSA Collaborative Practice Award (2019), AIA Michigan Design Awards (2013-2015), BSA Award Citations (2013-2014) and an ACSA Faculty Design Award (2012).
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; Sustainability; the Michigan Journal of Sustainability; Architect Magazine’s Next Progressives; PLOT; Green and Building Design; and other publications. She has exhibited work in the 2017 Shenzhen-Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism, the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, the University of Tennessee and the University of Minnesota. María holds an architecture professional degree from Madrid Polytechnic University, a master of advanced studies in landscape architecture from E.T.H. Zurich, and a master of landscape architecture in urban design from Harvard University, where she received the award for Urban Design Academic Excellence. The Fellowship for Postgraduate Studies “Obra Social La Caixa” made possible her academic journey in the US.
