Esther Rivas Adrover is an author, architectural researcher, educator and artist with a particular interest in architectural design, transformable architecture, deployable structures and kinetic design. After teaching Advanced Descriptive Geometry to architecture students in Spain she studied architecture at Oxford Brookes University where she later taught architectural design at degree and postgraduate level. Her interest in complex geometries led her to work for practices including Zaha Hadid Architects, where she worked on various projects in the UK and around the world. Her drawings have been exhibited several times at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.
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Esther’s interest in complex geometries led to a research piece on Transforming Architecture, Deployable Structures, which formed the subject for her thesis, which was nominated for the RIBA Dissertation Prize and won the Assael Scholarship. In recognition of her work, Esther was also awarded the RIBA Prize for the ‘Highest Standard in all-round Excellence’ in 2007. In 2015 she published a book with the title ‘Deployable Structures’, commissioned by Laurence King Publishing. She is currently undertaking research on the subject at the University of Cambridge. During her research at Cambridge she has developed several methods and inventions to make transformable surfaces that can expand and contract with scissor hinged and origami deployable structures. Her contributions to the field of transformable architecture have resulted in several publications, including her expandable origami, published in the Journal of the International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures (A new hybrid type of deployable structure: origami-scissor hinged). She has also lectured and run workshops nationally and internationally.