His many studies, articles, and other scholarly works, some of them translated into other languages, spanned a range of topics that included the Baroque period in Minas, formation of the first settlements in the region, and modern architecture.

He is especially known for the following contributions: Vila Rica: formação e desenvolvimento (an exhaustive study of development of the colonial city of Ouro Preto, based on his thesis defended in 1951 for one of four national chair professorships in Brazilian Architecture); Arquitetura no Brasil: Sistemas Construtivos (1958); Mineiridade: Ensaio de Caracterização [Mineiridade: An Essay on the Culture of Minas Gerais] (1968), for which he was awarded the First Prize for a Scholarly Work on Minas Gerais in 1969; and Vida e obra de Antônio Francisco Lisboa, O Aleijadinho, a study of the colonial sculptor often referred to as “the Little Cripple” in which he offered new context, extensive analysis, and a comprehensive catalog of the subject's work.

[3] He was elected Dean of the School of Architecture, UFMG, in 1963, but forcibly removed from the position at the start of the 1964 military coup in Brazil.

[6] Throughout his post-Brazil years, Sylvio continued to publish scholarly articles, wrote hundreds of articles for the Estado de Minas, won a grant from the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities to translate and annotate a collection of colonial documents on the settlement of Minas Gerais in the seventeenth century, and authored his exhaustive analysis of the work of Antônio Francisco Lisboa.

[7] Sylvio was taken prisoner with no formal charges on March 31, 1964, on the eve of the military takeover, and removed from his position as Dean of the School of Architecture.

The charges against him were not published until May 4, and he was not informed of them until after he was released from prison, thanks to intervention of his many supporters, in July of that year..[6] Among the accusations, he was charged with such allegedly subversive acts as fomenting revolution on the campus, spreading communist propaganda, encouraging students to proselytize in the slums, allowing them to sing communist songs, and arranging for their travel to an architectural conference in Cuba.

In particular, he stated that he was not responsible for the improper use of vehicles when they were not in service and had never had any contact with Luis Carlos Prestes, suggesting that the 1945 allegations referred to another person by the same name[8] Faced with the futility of trying to defend himself and the threat of being imprisoned again, Sylvio felt that he was forced to leave Brazil.

After 18 months in Chile, having been assured that he was protected under a writ of habeas corpus and could resume his activities with IPHAN and the UFMG School of Architecture, he returned to Brazil once more in 1968.

This order suspended habeas corpus for crimes of political motivation and imposed a series of additional restrictive measures, leaving Sylvio more vulnerable than ever.