Maria Rius Ruiz is passionate about architecture, design, and diverse forms of graphic expression. Her work explores how space, form, and structure can support environmental care and enhance communal life. Maria’s recent research, ‘UTOPIA INHABITED,’ reexamines radical neighborhood designs from the 1960s built to enhance social connectedness.
She holds a PhD and a Master of Architecture with highest honors from the Polytechnic University of Barcelona (UPC). Maria further enriched her architectural and artistic training at the Edinburgh College of Art (ECA) and pursued postgraduate studies in graphic design at the Barcelona School of Art and Design (EINA). She has received several prestigious fellowships, such as La Caixa Fellowship, the Arquia Scholarship, and the research residency grant from the Centre for Canadian Architecture (CCA).
Maria has taught at several institutions, including the Yale School of Architecture (YSOA), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the School of Architecture of Barcelona (UPC), the School of Architecture of Reus (URV), and the University School of Design and Engineering of Barcelona (ELISAVA).
In 2013, she co-founded NUA arquitectures, an architecture and design studio consistently recognized as one of the emerging young studios in Spain and Europe. The studio’s work explores 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 been selected in the FAD 2018 Awards, was a finalist in the 14th Spanish Biennial of Architecture and Town Planning, and was nominated for the European Contemporary Architecture Award - Mies van der Rohe 2019 awards, among others. NUA’s work has been widely published and exhibited, including the Venice Biennale of Architecture 2016. Maria directed NUA for over a decade. Before that, she collaborated as a junior architect at Estudio Herreros.
Since 2025, Maria has been leading her own creative studio based between New York and Barcelona.
