MAP Office is a multidisciplinary platform devised by Laurent Gutierrez and Valérie Portefaix. This duo of artists/architects has been working on physical and imaginary territories. Their contemporary practice combined a diversity of subjects and media that slipped boundlessly from one context to another or one island to another. Over the past 25 years, MAP Office has developed a research-based practice that critically observed the complex development of Hong Kong and the extended Pearl River Delta region of Mainland China. In 2021, MAP Office transformed into MA Umi (MAP Ocean), moving from Hong Kong to Ishigaki (Japan) to explore the concept of marine and coastal landscape in situ. Responding to the ongoing global crisis of climate change with the ambition to create a sustainable space, in both ecological and economic terms.
Laurent Gutierrez is a co-founder of MAP Office and MA UMI. He earned a Ph.D. in Architecture from RMIT. He is a Professor at the School of Design, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University where he leads the Master of Transitional Environments Design
Valérie Portefaix is an artist and architect. She is the principal and co-founder of MAP Office and MA UMI. After receiving a Bachelor of Fine Art, and a Master of Architecture, she earned a Ph.D. in Urbanism from University Pierre Mendes France.