The Rice School of Architecture is delighted to welcome Mónica Rivera as Harry K. & Albert K. Smith Professor, beginning July 1, 2025. An internationally recognized architect, educator, and researcher, Rivera will also serve as the director of graduate studies.
Rivera’s commitment to architectural practice as a cultural endeavor—one that is materially precise, socially engaged, and environmentally attuned—has been evident throughout her career. She holds a bachelor of fine arts and a bachelor of architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design, as well as a master of architecture (with distinction) from Harvard University. Before joining Rice, Rivera was chair of graduate architecture and JoAnne Stolaroff Cotsen Professor of Architecture at Washington University in St. Louis, where she led architectural research and advanced pedagogy in graduate design studios. Her scholarly work includes “Edges of Privacy: Open Access Walkways in Collective Housing,” a research initiative examining spatial thresholds and privacy in contemporary housing.
Rivera is the cofounder and codirector of Emiliano López Mónica Rivera Arquitectos, an award-winning, Barcelona-based firm known for its thoughtful approach to materiality and artisanry across multiple scales. Her work, which spans public housing, private residences, schools, hotels, furniture, and urban consultancy, has received numerous international awards, including multiple honors from the Spanish Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism and the Ibero-American Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism. Notable projects include Two Cork Houses, an innovative exploration of cross-laminated timber and cork cladding that received the “best architects 19” award (Germany) and the Egurtek Wood Award (Spain); and the Hotel Aire de Bardenas, which was awarded an AR Emerging Architecture Award. Her firm’s Social Housing for Young People in Barcelona received a prestigious FAD Award and was nominated for the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture—Mies van der Rohe Award.
Her designs and research have been published in El Croquis, A+U, Casabella, Domus, Detail, and Architectural Review, among others, and exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine in Paris, and the XIV Spanish Architecture and Urbanism Biennial. In 2021, her firm won a competition to design near-zero-energy intergenerational public housing in Mallorca, underscoring her commitment to sustainability and social impact.
This summer, Rivera’s project House in Arteaga, designed in collaboration with Emiliano López, will be featured in Internalities: Architectures for Territorial Equilibrium, the Spanish Pavilion’s exhibition at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of the Biennale de Venezia. Internalities showcases projects that use regenerative, low-carbon materials and reflect a deep connection to place. House in Arteaga—constructed with locally sourced cross-laminated timber on stone foundations from a nearby quarry and entirely without concrete—exemplifies this ethos and Rivera’s ongoing engagement with environmental responsibility.
“Mónica Rivera brings to our school an extraordinary depth of experience at the intersection of practice, research, and education,” said Igor Marjanović, William Ward Watkin Dean of the Rice School of Architecture. “Her ability to connect material innovation with social responsibility makes her a transformative addition to our faculty. As the new Harry K. & Albert K. Smith Professor, she will continue to advance conversations on architecture’s role in shaping resilient and equitable environments worldwide.”
Please join us in welcoming Mónica Rivera to the Rice School of Architecture.