Originally trained as an architect, López-Durán earned her Ph.D in the History, Theory, and Criticism of Architecture and Art from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Prior to joining the Rice University faculty, she was the 2009-2011 Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities at the Department of History of Art at University of California-Berkeley. Her awards include fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, Dedalus Foundation, CLIR, Harvard Center for European Studies, Camargo Foundation, Samuel H. Kress Foundation and the Fulbright Program. She has more recently been recognized by the Society of Architectural Historians with a SAH/Mellon Author Award for her 2018 book, Eugenics in the Garden. Her work has been published in Europe, Asia, South America and the United States.