MLL Atelier is an art-based architectural design research practice with specialization in multisensory design, futurological design, and biobehavioral design. This experimental architecture practice investigates at the nexus of environmental design, science, emerging technology, and human potential. MLL Atelier research wins awards for designs and publications internationally, while also disseminating research-based outcomes in two primary ways: (1) to architectural practitioners through "living" education portals, and (2) to people globally through experiential installations that fuse research-based design with the art of spatial poetics.

The firm's research methodology and design process by phase are as follows: (1) Design Trajectory: Literature/data review and analysis with diagrammatic argumentation that develops new design methods and trajectories from resulting grounded theory, (2) Experimental Prototyping: Development of experimental prototypes that explore experiential and design potentials of grounded theories through digital/analogue simulation, modelling, and visualization, and (3) Intervention Application: Creation of environmental and educational applications that experientially integrate these new research-based design findings into current architecture practice and virtual/physical built environment scenarios.

By primarily working with painting, sculpture, still/moving digital image, and book authorship to create visionary environmental artefacts, my research-based practice blurs boundaries by deeply bridging between architecture, art, and philosophy. At the core of my work is focus on architectural intervention that disrupts the status quo to awaken new possibility. My creative process asks "What if?", through my poetic prototypes that transform design fiction into design potential. In FilmSense (moving image), a building becomes camera as it (re)presents nature by photographing its experience into human memory. In Oceana (moving image), the sea is (dis)placed as a pavilion that awakens human compassion for this deeply hidden realm. In BioBuilding (moving image), an architecture syncs with human biorhythms to rejuvenate human vitality – making hospitals unnecessary. In Approach (painting), an architecture spans the horizon to evoke questions and pose answers about the blurring boundaries between built and natural environments. And in Deep Design (book), each page is a progressive immersion into artistic levels of seeing for the ultimate design of built form. My growing body of work is a continual exploration into the future of what environmental design 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.

Maria Lorena Lehman is a visionary author, designer, artist, and innovator focusing on links between environmental design, science, and emerging technologies. Lehman is founder of MLL Atelier, and is author of the award-winning book entitled, Adaptive Sensory Environments. 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 theory and application to unlock what environments can do to benefit people in innovative ways.

Lehman holds the degrees of Master in Design with Distinction from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and a Bachelor of Architecture, Cum Laude, from Virginia Tech. 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.

Maria Lorena Lehman is internationally published and in numerous periodicals, including The Architect's Journal, Esquisses Magazine, Architect Magazine, and Forbes. Currently, her work looks for new ways environments can uplift quality of life by innovating experience through multi-sensory design, adaptive design, and emerging design process tools, strategies, and methods. At the heart of her work is a motivation to push the role of the environment 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 and innovations can converge together with creative and forward-thinking design processes to drive more nurturing environmental futures. With ability to think and design beyond convention, Maria Lorena Lehman unlocks new visionary possibilities for environments to inspire, amaze, and delight in ways not experienced before.

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