The Rice School of Architecture is pleased to welcome four new faculty members whose creative practices and research deepen the school’s commitment to design excellence, architectural discourse, and planetary engagement. These appointments reflect the school’s ongoing investment in faculty whose work investigates the urgent material, environmental, and social conditions shaping the built environment.
“Each of our new faculty members brings a critical perspective to architecture—whether through experimental form, robotic fabrication, social engagement, or cultural storytelling,” said Igor Marjanović, William Ward Watkin Dean of the Rice School of Architecture. “Their distinct backgrounds and design approaches will expand our community’s capacity to imagine the architectural futures our world needs.”
Mónica Rivera, Harry K. & Albert K. Smith Professor and Director of Graduate Studies
Rivera is an architect and researcher whose practice explores architecture as a materially precise, environmentally grounded, and culturally embedded act. She is cofounder of the Barcelona-based firm Emiliano López Mónica Rivera Arquitectos, known for award-winning works such as Two Cork Houses and Social Housing for Young People in Barcelona. Her design and scholarship have been widely published and exhibited, including at the Venice Architecture Biennale and the Cité de l’Architecture. She previously served as chair of graduate architecture at Washington University in St. Louis.
Jennifer Bonner, Visiting Critic
Bonner is a designer and educator whose work blends formal experimentation, cultural critique, and visual communication to challenge conventions in architecture. Founder of MALL (aka Mass Architectural Loopty Loops, aka Maximum Arches with Limited Liability), she explores southern identity, material assemblies, and collective housing through a playful and provocative design language. Her work has been exhibited at the Chicago Architecture Biennial, Istanbul Modern, and the National Building Museum and has received a United States Artists Fellowship, the Architectural League Prize, and the Progressive Architecture Award.
Tung Nguyen, Lecturer
Nguyen is a Vietnamese architectural designer whose work explores public space as a platform for cultural exchange and inclusive design. His background—shaped by migration, fabrication, and civic practice—informs projects that span sensory experience and spatial justice. A recipient of the William Kinne Fellows Traveling Prize, he has contributed to award-winning installations at Glass City Metropark and Lincoln Center. He also serves as the public art project manager at Metalab and teaches on perception and neurodiversity in architecture.
Ian Ting, Lecturer
Ting is an architectural designer and researcher working at the intersection of computational design, robotic fabrication, and emerging construction ethics. He has taught at Princeton and the University of Michigan and is currently pursuing doctoral studies in multi-robotic construction at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. His work, published in Construction Robotics and Digital Creativity, addresses real-time collaboration between human beings and machines in architecture. He is also a contributor to The Spectoptricon (Actar, forthcoming) and a former editor of Pidgin journal.
To learn more about the Rice School of Architecture, visit arch.rice.edu.