Founded in Barcelona by María Charneco, Alfredo Lérida, Guillermo López, and Anna Puigjaner, MAIO is an architecture firm with a non-hierarchical working structure. Its members develop their own theories and then pool them together with graphic artists, landscapists, or interior designers.

MAIO is also renowned for its work in furniture and exhibition design, and for its forays into the publishing field, since it collaborates with the magazine Cuadernos de arquitectura y urbanismo, among other publications.

MAIO is active in education and research. Its members have given talks at museums like the Metropolitan in New York and universities like Yale and Harvard, and they teach at the School of Architecture in Barcelona and Columbia University. Their works have been shown at the Royal Academy in London and the Chicago Architecture Biennial.