• Participants: Maria Paz Gutierrez and Donald Gensler, Berkeley and Sacramento, USA

• Team: Paul Wang, Yunting Zhao, Kahong (Frederic) Lam, Shaoyi Wang, Jin Lee

• Authorial Collaborators: Catalina Lopez Chavez; Klara Scharnagl; Shu Yang

• Supporters: Bakar Prize; Amorim; ABB Robotics

• Role: Fabrication Assistant(Graduate Student Researcher, Spring 2025)

Palm Onto-Intelligence is a domain of and for belonging, led by Dr. Maria Paz Gutierrez, Bakar Fellow and Professor of Architecture and BIOMS founder at UC Berkeley, with Donald Gensler. The installation features four material-territorial quarters representing the social, technological, and material regenerative dynamics shaping future construction in the Western Amazon. Bringing together architecture, biosynthesis, art, anthropology, artificial intelligence, and co-design, it explores multiple dimensions of material intelligence through synergistic combinations of palm, cork, and engineered yeast (DNA) — pioneering 3D screens with cooling, antimicrobial, and flood-resilience properties. Through this intelligent material behavior, the work envisions belonging as a foundation for future plant-human material cultures.