The apartments tower is located in Itaim Bibi in
São Paulo, a neighbourhood in a deep
transformation, which is moving from the
traditional fabric of horizontal single-family
homes to a skyline of buildings in height, mainly
homes that meet a growing residential demand
for a prosperous upper middle class in the
economic capital of the country.
The building has 123 apartments and
consists of a tower of 25 floors with a base of
common areas (squash, indoor pool, restaurant,
social room, etc.) and parking above ground.
The tower, highly conditioned by the volumetric
limitations imposed by the regulations and the
strict requirements of functional optimization,
hosts small houses with large individual
terraces.
The project seeks to maximize the
slenderness of the volume and highlight,
without stridency, in the monotonous sea of
undifferentiated skyscrapers of São Paulo as a
„singularity of good manners“.
The floors are articulated in two parallel bays
and a central communications core that
includes two batteries of panoramic elevators.
The main openings of the houses are oriented
to north and south, with deep balconies to
mitigate the intense Brazilian solar radiation,
while the east and west facades, the most
exposed in the climate of São Paulo, are solved
with a predominance of opaque protected
surface by a ventilated façade of large-format
glazed ceramic pieces.
On the balconies sides, the ceramic coating
becomes lattices which preserves the houses
privacy and frame the views from the inside.
The combination of colours of the covering
pieces seeks the chromatic individualization of
each level, as well as the research of singularity
that provides the differential qualitative value
sought out by the client, who specifically
wanted a colourful tower.
The building thus becomes a slender
tower in which, however, it is possible to
recognize the different housing units by the
colour and the framework that governs the
construction. On the upper floors, the extension
of the central core and larger apartments finish
the building in a stepped way to merge with the
urban profile and generate large terraces for the
enjoyment of the unbeatable views over the
city.
