MAU ATELIER
MAU Atelier is a landscape architecture and visualization studio founded in 2020 by Joana Carvalho and Miguel Magalhães.
Based in Lisbon and shaped by professional experience in Portugal and Germany, the studio is devoted to landscapes in all their forms and expressions. We work across different scales and contexts, from public spaces, parks and urban landscapes to competitions and new forms of representing and communicating landscape. Our work unfolds through two complementary practices.
Projects & Competitions is our landscape architecture practice. We design landscapes as living systems, shaped by people, ecology, time and place. From the first idea to the built space, we search for clear concepts and strong identities rooted in the particular qualities of each landscape.
Alongside our own projects, we collaborate with landscape architecture and architecture studios across Europe, developing visualizations, plans, diagrams and visual narratives for projects and competitions.
We do not see design and representation as separate disciplines. One informs the other. Like a landscape itself, it is all interconnected.
MIGUEL MAGALHÃES is a Portuguese landscape architect with a particular interest in public space, landscape transformation and the development of clear design concepts for complex sites. He studied Landscape Architecture at the University of Évora and later moved to Germany, where he completed his Master’s degree at HfWU Nürtingen.
In Berlin, he worked with A24 Landschaft and Atelier LOIDL, focusing primarily on public competitions and early-stage design. This experience shaped an approach that brings together conceptual clarity, technical thinking and visual communication as interconnected parts of the design process.
He returned to Portugal in 2019. Between 2020 and 2024, he developed his practice through Atelier BAUM, before continuing his work as co-founder of MAU Atelier.
JOANA CARVALHO is a Portuguese landscape architect whose work explores the relationship between contemporary design, social processes and the everyday experience of public space. She studied Landscape Architecture at the Instituto Superior de Agronomia in Lisbon before moving to Germany, where she completed her Master’s degree at TU Berlin.
In Germany, she worked with WES LandschaftsArchitektur and Atelier LOIDL, developing her experience across landscape architecture projects and competitions and strengthening a design approach that combines conceptual thinking with a strong graphical sensibility.
She returned to Portugal in 2018. Between 2020 and 2024, she developed her practice through Atelier BAUM, before continuing her work as co-founder of MAU Atelier.