Profile
Mónica Rivera is an architect and educator whose work investigates the intersection of climate, material performance, and collective living. She is a principal at Emiliano López Mónica Rivera Arquitectos, a Barcelona-based practice internationally recognized for its environmentally responsive and socially engaged architecture. The studio’s work spans housing, schools, health facilities, hotels, furniture, and urban consultancy, with a particular emphasis on social and intergenerational housing.
Rivera’s built projects are widely published in journals including El Croquis, Detail, A+U, Casabella, Domus, Arquitectura Viva, and Architectural Review, and have been exhibited at the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine in Paris and multiple editions of the Venice Architecture Biennale. Her firm’s recent Passive House in Arteaga, Spain featured in the 2025 biennale, demonstrates a low-carbon approach through the exclusive use of local cross-laminated timber (CLT) and stone, eliminating concrete to model circular construction strategies.
Her work has been honored with the AR Emerging Architecture Award, first prizes at the Ibero-American and Spanish Biennials of Architecture and Urbanism, and the FAD Award for Social Housing for Young People in Barcelona. Other notable projects include the Intergenerational Cohousing in Mallorca and Two Cork Houses—both exploring CLT and bio-based materials—and the reversible Hotel Aire de Bardenas. A monograph on the firm’s work, Domestic Thresholds, was published by Quart Verlag in English, Spanish, and German.
Rivera’s academic research focuses on architecture’s latent social uses and the relationship between climate, form, and community, with ongoing investigations into Puerto Rico’s suburban conditions and collective housing models. Prior to joining the Rice School of Architecture as director of graduate studies and Harry K. & Albert K. Smith Professor, she served as chair of graduate architecture and the JoAnne Stolaroff Cotsen Professor at Washington University in St. Louis.
She holds a BFA and B.Arch. from the Rhode Island School of Design and an M.Arch. with distinction from Harvard University.