Maria Lorena LEHMAN

Maria Lorena Lehman is a visionary artist, designer, and author focusing on links between architectural design, science, and emerging technologies as explored through her research-based art practice. Lehman is author of the internationally published book entitled, Adaptive Sensory Environments, which won the Silver Medal Nautilus Book Award. ArchDaily describes Maria Lorena Lehman as “one of the leading experts on delivering exceptional occupant experience through smart building design”. Her work attracts an international audience as it bridges between architectural application and universal interpretation to unlock what environments can do to benefit people in innovative ways. The work of Maria Lorena Lehman is described as "visual poetry of motion that is a new inspiration" by Daniel Smith, the company that creates watercolors for artists worldwide.

Lehman holds the degrees of Master in Design with Distinction from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design in the United States, and a Bachelor of Architecture, Cum Laude, from Virginia Tech in the United States. Lehman is recipient of the Harvard University Digital Design Prize for the “most creative use of digital media in relation to the design professions”. While at Harvard University, Lehman worked to innovate healing environments by researching at the nexus of architectural technology, digital media, and neuroscience within the Harvard Graduate School of Design, House_n. Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the Neuroscience Department of the Harvard Medical School. Lehman also studied with Professor T. Kelly Wilson during the "Drawing from Masters" course at Harvard University.

Maria Lorena Lehman is internationally published and in numerous periodicals, including The Architect's Journal, Esquisses Magazine, Architect Magazine, and Forbes. Currently, her studio work looks for new ways environments can uplift quality of life by innovating experience, which she explores deeply through her artistic process. At the heart of her work is a motivation to push the role of architecture into more proactive realms that empower people to thrive and achieve fulfillment at their highest potential. Maria Lorena Lehman has a vision for how interdisciplinary findings between architecture, science, philosophy, and emerging technology can unlock more nurturing environmental futures that she envisions as new architectural possibilities through her artworks that inspire, amaze, and delight in ways not experienced before.

Artist statement

By primarily working with painting, sculpture, and book authorship to create visionary environmental artefacts, my research-based art practice blurs boundaries by deeply bridging between architecture, science, and philosophy. I create art that explores the future of architecture and urbanism in which my vision for the future of environmental design converges with emerging science and technology to yield architectural applications and universal interpretations that help humanity thrive as we progress into our next evolution. My creative practice of painting and sculpting is very response-based as I deeply listen to the artwork “unfold” while composing the experience that it will become. Through the creation of each piece, I explore the future of architecture – not only for its aesthetic, but also for its function and deeper meaning. In turn, this also yields poetic art that has not only a purpose for architectural application, but also a greater universal interpretation for any person experiencing the work. At the core of each art piece is focus on intervention that disrupts the status quo to awaken new possibility. My creative process asks "What if?", through my research-based artworks that transform design fiction into design trajectories. My growing body of work is a continual exploration into the future of what environments can become as a practice that awakens and inspires humanity to actualize our highest potential, as individuals and as a collective so we may thrive as we progress into our next evolution.