MIAU Studio is an architecture practice founded by Mauricio Quirós Pacheco.
Based in Canada and Costa
Rica, the studio is committed with equal enthusiasm to professional and
academic work. Regardless of their
nature, our projects are rooted in the premise that architecture is
fundamentally a constructive act, and that today's pressing matters - from the
environmental to the social - demand economy of means, austerity, invention,
and optimism.
Mauricio Quirós Pacheco is a Costa Rican–Canadian architect and the founding partner of MIAU Studio. He is also an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design.
He holds a Master of Architecture in Urban Design, with distinction, from Harvard University, and a Bachelor of Architecture from Universidad del Diseño, where he received the Best Thesis Award.
From 2010 to 2014, Mauricio worked with then-director Mirko Zardini at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA). He has practiced architecture and urban design across the Americas and Europe, collaborating with firms such as Stanley Saitowitz Office and the Renzo Piano Building Workshop.
Mauricio has served as a guest critic at several universities, including Yale University and the Sam Fox School of Architecture, and as a guest juror for international competitions such as Architecture for Humanity’s Crossing Borders and the International Open Competition for FUNDECOR Headquarters.
He sits on the Editorial Board of Manifest: A Journal of American Architecture and Urbanism, and his writings have appeared in publications including Domus, San Rocco, and the Architectural Observer.
In 2016, he co-curated the symposium Modern Architectures in Central America with Hans Ibelings, and in 2024, the two—alongside Andrés Fernández—published Modern Architectures in Central America, a comprehensive overview of 20th-century modern architecture in the region.