Ana Rosa Chagas Cavalcanti is an architect and urban planner.

She was born in Brazil, Maceió and She spent her first years of life in France where her father received his doctorate.

She studied architecture and urban planning at UFAL, the Federal University of Alagoas (2004-2009). She graduated with the thesis “Dos calejados pés os passos dos filhos de mãe lagoa: a produção do espaço a partir dos ritos de sururu na Favela Sururu de Capote (The steps of the sons of Mother Lagoon: the production of space from the fishing of sururu in the Favela Sururu de Capote”). Her thesis was worth a nomination to the “Opera Prima”, and a certificate of academic excellence in 2009 a prize for the best graduation in architecture and urbanism thesis in Brazil.

After the graduation, She worked at Bijari (2010) and at Triptyque Architecture (2011) in São Paulo, Brazil. In the following two years She lived in Paris (France) and Rome (Italy) , where She received a joint master of second level between La Sapienza University and ENSA, Paris-Val-de-Seine in “Management of complex architecture projects.” In Italy, she was also awarded the first prize in the architectural competition “72HUA” (Terni, 2012). Two years later She would be selected for the “Biennial of Public Spaces” of Rome, 2015.

In 2013, She researched at the department of urban design at the University of Hamburg.

In 2014 continued the in-field research in Brazilian favelas started in 2009. In 2014 She decided to investigate the spatial influence of the socio-economic practices emplaced by residents of informal settlements. In the same year She was selected to participate to the “UCL Cities Methodologies”, where She introduced for the first time two embryonic ideas of what it would be later the core of her pedagogical contribution in academia: an idea of a “School of Architecture in the Favela” and a “Pattern language of self-construction.” With the findings collected in Brazilian favelas since 2009 and the related interpretation, She received a grant “Science without Borders” from Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) and the Ministry of Brazilian Education (MEC), in order to accomplish a doctorate aimed at contributing to better housing policies and practices in Brazil.

From 2019 Ana Rosa is a Doctor in Architecture and Urban Planning (Ph.D.) from TU Delft (The Netherlands).

“Labour primary shapes, plans and governs space in informal settlements” (from the article Work, slums and informal settlements traditions: architecture in the favela do telegrafo, 2017).

During the doctorate, She received several acknowledgements from the academic and societal community. In 2015, She was awarded with a fellowship from IJURR “Authors meet critics 2015.” In the same year She received the fellowship “Whonungsfrage” by Haus der Kulturen der Welt and Columbia Buel centre. In 2017 She received a travel grant for promising emerging scholars in the field of dangerous landscape from the Volkswagen Foundation and Leibniz University Hannover. In 2020, She received a grant Global Architecture History Teaching Collective from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and University of Washington, to provide online lectures.

Since 2020, Ana Rosa is investigating the territorial and spatial aspects of the common good(s) (commons), as a post-doctoral fellow ‘Learning with the Commons: Housing for an Urban Social Revolution, from the University of São Paulo (Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism from the University of São Paulo/ FAUUSP) at the Critical Thinking and Contemporary City Research Group. Between 2021 and 2022, she acted as a Professor Collaborator at FAUUSP, within the realm of the Program of Attraction and Retention of Talents (PART/2021-2022) from the University of São Paulo, where she co-taught a course on the common good ‘AUH0545 Aprendendo com os Bens Comuns/Learning with the Commons.’