Fab 40: Culture Complex, Sao Paolo

(Image credit: Herzog & de Meuron)

last updated 13 October 2022

Herzog & de Meuron's latest project is an ambitious and elegant addition to Brazil’s bustling megatropolis, consolidating key institutions from around Latin America’s largest cultural district into one vast, interconnected space. The complex will add a new 1740-seat dance theatre, a 400-seat experimental theatre, dance and music schools, and a library and museum dedicated to the performing arts.

Complex includes 1740-seat dance theatre, a 400-seat experimental theatre, dance and music schools, and a library and museum

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At night, together with its vertical glass walls, the structure will form a luminescent tapestry across central São Paulo, and potentially be the catalyst for its rebirth. Local officials are looking to the project to bring the area back from the fringe, which may be a tall order for a cultural campus, but if anyone has proven the place-making power of architecture it’s Herzog & de Meuron. The project is scheduled for completion in 2014.

Ellie Stathaki is the Architecture & Environment Director at Wallpaper*. She trained as an architect at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece and studied architectural history at the Bartlett in London. Now an established journalist, she has been a member of the Wallpaper* team since 2006, visiting buildings across the globe and interviewing leading architects such as Tadao Ando and Rem Koolhaas. Ellie has also taken part in judging panels, moderated events, curated shows and contributed in books, such as The Contemporary House (Thames & Hudson, 2018), Glenn Sestig Architecture Diary (2020) and House London (2022).