Manuela Lourenço is a Brazilian-Portuguese architect, photographer, and visual researcher, splitting her time between New York and São Paulo. Through photography, she explores place identity and the emotional bonds people form with lived and everyday spaces, from domestic interiors to urban and "natural" landscapes. By using images to evoke the genius loci, the spirit or essence of a place, she tries to make legible what is felt but rarely named.

Her architectural thesis, The Espigão and its Windows: Possibilities in the Void, a walking exploration of São Paulo's remnant spaces with unobstructed views of the horizon, was selected for the São Paulo Biennale's permanent archive and exhibited at the Mário de Andrade Library during the 2017 edition. She was also awarded a research fellowship from Escola da Cidade Architecture Association for The Construction of the City's Image Through Photographic Narratives.

In 2021, she received a fellowship to study at the International Center of Photography (ICP). There she developed There Will Be Something There, a walking project tracing the genius loci of New York City through serendipitous encounters and family memory, exhibited at ICP Museum and Art Gowanus.

She currently works as a freelance photographer with clients including Lonely Planet, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Greenpeace, and as a teaching assistant at ICP, while developing Topo Club, a platform exploring place identity, making, and belonging through walks, conversations, and photographic research.

Her work has been exhibited in group shows in New York, San Francisco, and São Paulo, and featured in ArchDaily, Booooooom, C41, PhotoVogue, PHmuseum, Fotodemic, Musée Magazine, It's Nice That, and Blind Magazine.