[1] Souza is known to have grown up in the Goa village of Badem, Salvador do Mundo, and building models of boats and little houses as a child.

[2] After his undergraduation and postgraduation in the United States, he worked for international firms in Central as well as South America—including in Brasília, Brazil, before returning to Goa.

He spent his early years as a young professor and practitioner at the prominent School of Planning and Architecture (SPA), in New Delhi.

[2] In Goa, Souza has been critical of bureaucratic functioning and corruption in the system, where he won two competitions but was edged out of the same.

[2][3] Souza has argued that the Goan capital of Panjim is "forgetting its past by trying to redesign open spaces."