He founded and directs the MIT Urban Metabolism Group, a highly multidisciplinary research group focused on the resource intensity of cities and design and technology pathways for future urbanization. His research has been focused on the materials and physical elements and components of the assemblies and systems of buildings, published in Material Architecture: emergent materials for innovative buildings and ecological construction (2005).

He studied architecture at MIT and Princeton University. Accepting the essential tenets of the field of industrial ecology, he is involved in initiatives intended to bring forth real change in the ways in which material and energy networks are configured toward the making of contemporary buildings.

John E Fernández is engaged in the articulation of concepts of the ecology of contemporary construction. This effort involves identifying the distinct consumption profile and resource requirement attributes of our existing anthropogenic stock of buildings while formulating design strategies that contribute to reuse and recycling of building materials and components.