Mirella Mansur

Her site visits are legendary within the industry. She is known to climb scaffolding in steel-toed boots to check the rebar placement before a pour, demanding that her female interns do the same. This hands-on leadership has produced a generation of younger Brazilian women who are not afraid of getting their hands dirty in the service of high design. No major architect escapes criticism, and Mirella Mansur has faced her share. Environmentalists have occasionally balked at her use of cement—a material responsible for high CO2 emissions. Critics argue that even "tropical brutalism" is still just brute force construction in an era that demands bamboo and recycled plastics.

She pursued her degree at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), where she was heavily influenced by the faculty’s emphasis on "arquitetura enraizada" (rooted architecture). Following her graduation, moved to São Paulo for her master’s degree at the University of São Paulo (FAU-USP). Here, she studied under the tutelage of Artur Freitas, focusing on the phenomenological aspects of space—how buildings feel, not just how they look. mirella mansur

For students of architecture, she offers a lesson in resistance. She rejects the globalized glass curtain wall in favor of the local, the heavy, and the handmade. As the world faces a climate crisis, the passive cooling and durable strategies of are no longer niche—they are essential. Her site visits are legendary within the industry