Maria Aiolova

Maria Aiolova, Arup University Leader, Co-Founder, Terreform ONE

Maria Aiolova is an educator, designer, consultant and community builder in New York City. She is an innovator in ecological design, smart cities, and sustainable urban infrastructure. Maria is the Leader of Arup University in the Americas where she directs learning, research, foresight, and innovation. She co-founded Terreform ONE, urban research and foresight consulting group. She worked with the developer of New Lab at the Brooklyn Navy Yard to create a vibrant community of over 100 start-up companies working in emerging technologies such as urban tech, robotics, artificial intelligence, and connected devices. Maria served as the Academic Director of Global Programs at CIEE, where she created semester-long programs on Future Cities in Berlin, Barcelona, Prague, Shanghai, Cape Town, and New York City. She is an inventor, who holds 18 technology patents. Maria lectures and teaches internationally about design principles, emergent practices and sustainable development.

Most recently, she taught at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, IAAC, Pratt Institute, and Parsons School of Design. She has won a number of honors including; AIA New York Urban Design Merit Award, 1st Place International Architecture Award, Victor Papanek Social Design Award, Zumtobel Group Award for Sustainability, and the Build Boston Award. Her work has been the official selection at the Venice Biennale and has been exhibited at MoMA, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New Institute in Rotterdam. Maria received her M.Arch. in Urban Design from Harvard University, B.Arch. from Wentworth IT with Honors, Dipl.-Ing. from the Technical University of Vienna, Austria and Sofia, Bulgaria.

Maria’s most recent book ‘Design with Life: Biotech Architecture and Resilient Cities’ was published by Actar Publishers in 2019.