Maria Rius Ruiz
Maria Rius Ruiz is a designer, PhD researcher and Adjunct Professor of Architecture and Urbanism. She is currently conducting a research stay in the Future Urban Collectives lab at MIT financed by the Fulbright fellowship ‘La Caixa’.
Maria is pursuing a doctoral degree at the Polytechnic University of Barcelona (ETSAB, UPC) with a thesis entitled ‘Inhabited utopias’. Her research focuses on experimental collective housing designs organized around common spaces.
In 2013 she co-founded NUA arquitectures, an architecture and design studio which has consistently been recognized as one of the emerging young studios in Spain and Europe. The studio’s work explores the fields of architecture and design at different scales through strategies sensitive to the history of sites and the environment, seeking to respond to social and cultural changes in contemporary cities and territories. NUA has received an Alejandro de la Sota 2021 Award, has been selected in the FAD 2018 Awards, was finalist in the 14th Spanish Biennial of Architecture and Town Planning, and nominated for the European Contemporary Architecture Award - Mies van der Rohe 2019 awards, among others. NUA’s work has been widely exhibited, including the Venice Biennale of Architecture (2016), and has been published in various national and international media.
Maria teaches architecture and urbanism at the School of Architecture of Reus (EAR), and previously at the School of Architecture of Barcelona (ETSAB) and the University School of Design and Engineering of Barcelona (ELISAVA). She has also been invited to be part of the panel of judges in several critical sessions in various schools such as the School of Architecture of the International University of Catalonia (UIC), the La Salle School of Architecture, Tarragona (URL), and has been invited to give lectures at various institutions and schools of architecture such as the Archmarathon International Congress in Milan (2016), the College of Architects in Madrid (2014), the School of Architecture in Malaga (2016), the Santa Mònica Arts Centre (2016), among others.
Maria obtained a M.Sc degree in architecture from the Polytechnic University of Barcelona (ETSAB, UPC) in 2011 with the highest honours and supplemented her training at Edinburgh College of Art (ECA) and Barcelona School of Art and Design (EINA). Her final thesis project entitled ‘Organic infrastructure for life’, was qualified with a distinction and won several awards. She was awardee of an Arquia scholarship that led her to be part of the team of estudio Herreros from 2011 to 2013.
