Raquel Lejtreger trained as an architect at the Universidad de la República in Montevideo and has worked mainly at the intersection of territorial planning, housing policy and disaster risk. She coordinated Uruguay's National Housing Plan for 2010–2014, which included a national programme to relocate families living on flood-prone and contaminated land, and from February 2012 she served as vice-minister of housing, territorial planning and the environment, representing Uruguay in international forums on habitat and climate. Her best-known built work is the Espacio Memorial Penal de Libertad on Route 1, won in open competition in 2016 with the architect Javier Olascoaga; both are children of political prisoners held at the prison the memorial commemorates. The project was later selected for the seventh Ibero-American Design Biennial in Madrid.
