We Are Still Taking Root

studio mangue is a Toronto-based collective, an ecosystem in formation.
Initiated by Vivian Gomes, the studio began with a visual and written manifesto in Alagoas, created in collaboration with Renner Boldrino and Rogério Félix.

What started as a return to the manguezais, an encounter between memory, land, and water, has become an open invitation to co-create.

Vivian is calling urban designers, artists, architects, researchers, and educators to join in exploratory collaborations with communities, non-profits, and educational institutions.

The collective is growing.
The roots are spreading.
And the work takes shape through those who join us.

  • Initiator: Vivian Gomes

    Vivian Gomes is an architect and urban designer who moves between design, storytelling, and care. A barefoot urbanist, she walks between land and water, memory and imagination, exploring how cities can breathe with the rhythms of nature and culture.

    Collaborator: Rogério Félix

    Rogério Félix is an architect and urban designer, photographer, art director, and craftsman. His work merges architectural language with reflections on the landscape, exploring the dialogue between the natural and the built, where form becomes narrative and place becomes memory.

    Photography: Renner Boldrino

    Renner Boldrino is a photographer and visual storyteller whose work explores memory, territory, and the everyday life of Northeastern Brazil. His images move between documentary and poetics, tracing the textures of land, water, and the people who inhabit them.

    Together

    Working between Toronto and Maceió, Vivian, Rogério, and Renner created the first visual and written gestures of studio mangue , a collaboration rooted in landscape, culture, and the relational ecologies that connect the two places. Their collaboration brings together distant geographies, design, craft, and visual storytelling to explore how memory, land, and community can shape new ways of imagining urban life.