Maria Gabriela Carucci

 Maria Gabriela Carucci is a Research Associate at the Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism (LCAU) at MIT. She understands her practice as an exercise in exploring complex histories and planetary tensions through drawing and multimedia narratives. Her work is driven by a passion for history, heritage, and data-driven storytelling, and she seeks to reframe anthropogenic frameworks to explore architecture’s capacity to mediate urgent environmental and sociopolitical tensions. Through agents such as pigeons, barricades, flocks of sheep, and volcanoes, she investigates the intersections of ecological systems, cultural identities, and human intervention.
Gaby holds a Master of Science in Architecture Studies (Urbanism) from MIT, as well as dual Bachelor’s degrees in Architecture and Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design, where she concentrated in Nature, Culture, and Sustainability Studies. At MIT, she received the Arthur Rotch [1872–73] Prize for academic achievement and her graduate thesis, When the Earth Breathes: An Anthology of Volcanic Urbanism. Her short film, At the Edge of Land, was featured in an article in the Journal of Architectural Education.

Her research has been supported by CAMIT grants and showcased in exhibitions such as Amidst Four Works, curated by Out of Frame at the MIT Wiesner Student Gallery, and Personal Landscapes: From Particle to Planet, presented at the MIT SA+P and the European Cultural Centre (ECC) in Venice. Her academic work has been published in the Out of Frame Journal and Brown University’s Urban Journal. At the LCAU, Maria contributes to design and research initiatives, including work on South American migration and the proposal for the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale.