A School of Architecture Lecture Series Event
When
Essence
What is your intrinsic nature and indispensable quality that determines your character as a designer? Evolving one’s essence requires tactics including sole endeavors, working in partnerships, and assembling wholes teams where essences coalesce to create unexpected projects with viability and vitality to evolve as their own over time.
About the Speakers
Matthew Salenger, AIA
Matthew is an artist and architect with deep roots in Maui, where he was raised. He earned Honors degrees from Arizona State University and later graduated with Diploma Honors from The Architectural Association of London. His work focuses on pushing the boundaries of community interaction, design, and environmentalism, seeking innovative ways to create spaces that inspire and engage. A lifelong surfer, musician, and non-fiction author, Matthew brings a creative and holistic perspective to his craft.
Maria Salenger, AIA
Maria’s love of drawing and craft drove her to study architecture at the University of Arizona in Tucson and art at University College London in the UK. Her work fluctuates between conceptual and technical design with an effort to inspire “unique futures.” Through architecture, public art, and studio art projects, she engages interiors with exterior space, creates symbolic employment of gardens, views to sky, and details derived from forms found in nature or stories from the community. By connecting people to place her projects bring an inherent understanding of why sustainable design is important.
About the Studio
Since 2004, coLAB studio has blurred the lines between architecture and art, crafting spaces that challenge conventions. Providing thoughtful and balanced projects, whether they are Architecture (warm, active, scientific, externalized “Yang” energy) or Art (mysterious, transitioning, sensing, internalized “Yin” energy.) We fuse the two, balancing science with sensation, data with intuition. Biophilic Design and Building Science fuel our work, ensuring every project is as functional as it is visceral. We draw from a freelance cohort of repeat collaborators-- building and site scientists, artists, planners, digital specialists, even a poet—brings unexpected depth to every collaboration.
coLAB studio has earned 55+ major awards, including Arizona Firm of the Year by AIA Arizona (2023). The work has been published locally and nationally including Architectural Record, Architecture Magazine, Dwell, and The Wall Street Journal. We guide every project with sustainable design, delivering high-performance, regenerative, net-zero-energy buildings that redefine Arizona’s architectural landscape.
