Profil

Miguel Angel Reyes Benz is a M.Sc. architect, visual artist and researcher. Influenced by Frei Otto and the Institut for lightweight structures and conceptual design (ILEK) he moved to Germany and got his dual degree from TU Berlin and Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile under the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) sponsorship.

His work moves between experimental architecture, sculpture, and exhibition production, always rooted in hands-on material practice, from membrane fabrication and metalworking to site-specific installation. He has been actively exhibiting and participating in architecture and art competitions internationally since 2011. For more than a decade he has carried out para-academic research at the intersection of art, architecture, and frontier sciences.

He is currently enrolled as a PhD student at the University of Innsbruck’s Institute for Experimental Architecture, in the Integrative Design | EXTREMES program, supervised by Univ.-Prof. Dr. Barbara Imhof. His doctoral research, titled ‘Negentropic Bifurcations Towards an Autopoietic Polyextremophile Transilience’, looks at how PHA (polyhydroxyalkanoate), a biodegradable biopolymer produced by extremophile bacteria, could serve as a membrane building material for pneumatic life support systems in extreme environments on Earth. The project works across three scales (molecular, material, and architectural), connecting systems metabolic engineering, environmental microbiology, materials engineering, and architecture for extreme environments. Aimed to a field tested prototype of a lightweight pneumatic structure, tested in the Icelandic highlands and in Antarctica.

He participated at FALCON Conference, University of Iceland, Reykjavík 2025, organized by AbGradE (Astrobiology Graduates in Europe), Berlin Early Career Space Research Conference, Freie Universität Berlin 2025 and 15th International Congress on Extremophiles, Yonsei University, Seoul, Republic of Korea 2026.