Creatively busy and while remaining active in Italy, Nivola also taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Columbia University, UC Berkeley, and elsewhere.
In Sassari in 1926, Nivola served as apprentice to fellow painter Mario Delitala, executing frescoes for the aula magna of the local university.
Introduced in 1945 by Josep Lluís Sert, Nivola became warm lifelong friends with the Swiss architect, his houseguest on Corbu's rare trips to America.
[9] Supported by small exhibitions and a progression of jobs in factories,[10] for Bonwit Teller, and for architectural magazines, the Nivolas bought a modest property in Springs, East Hampton, Long Island.
Their garden landscape, a series of outdoor rooms and a roofless solarium, was co-designed by the Nivolas and architect Bernard Rudofsky; in 1950 Le Corbusier impulsively painted murals on two walls of their kitchen.
One project, involving two thousand and ten cast-concrete panels for the McCormick Place Exposition Center in Chicago in 1959, was touted as the largest such installation ever.
He was also visiting professor or artist in residence at Columbia University (1961), Harvard (1970 and 1973), Dartmouth (1978), UC Berkeley (1978–79 and 1982), and the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (1982).