Brazilian Modernist architecture thrived between the 1930s and 1960s, expanding the boxy rationalism of European Modernism with new qualities driven by its distinct climate, politics and culture. Defined by sinuous curves, rhythmic brise soleils, shaded platforms, tropical gardens and bright colours, it injected art, humanism and nature into a modernist architecture where some of these qualities were previously underrepresented.

An introduction to Brazilian modernism

In the first half of the 20th century or so, political leaders in the independent and newly industrialising country seized upon the movement's aesthetic and innovative power, envisioning bold national buildings and entire new capital city of Brasilia designed by architect Oscar Niemeyer (1907-2012) and urban planner Lúcio Costa. Modernism, elevated by the scale and ambition of this national platform, captured international attention at the time and continues to drive leading Brazilian architects of today.

Brazilian modernism: the origins

After developing in Europe from the early 1920s, the functional Bauhaus language of modernist architecture (influenced by construction innovation and socio-economic aims) began to disseminate in Brazil in the late 20s. In 1928, architect Gregori Warchavchik (1896-1972) – who emigrated from Odesa in today’s Ukraine to Brazil in 1923 – built Brazil’s first modern house. The ‘Casa Modernista’ in São Paulo aesthetically followed the European Bauhaus style, yet its ceramic-tiled roof hinted at Brazil’s distinct, dynamic context.

Around the same time, Le Corbusier arrived in 1929 for a series of lectures on his ‘Five Points of Architecture’. He met French-born Brazilian architect Lúcio Costa (1902–1998), who invited his advice on the 14-storey Ministry of Education and Health (1936–1943) in Rio. This landmark of Brazilian modernism combined Le Corbusier’s framework, with the innovation of its local team resulting in a dynamic brise-soleil shading system, azulejos tile murals by Cândido Portinari, and landscape design by Roberto Burle Marx. The younger architects on this team, Oscar Niemeyer and Affonso Eduardo Reidy, had only just begun their careers.

Key characteristics

From the 1930s, architects such as Niemeyer and Reidy in Rio, and João Batista Vilanova Artigas in São Paulo, expanded the style. The cooling brise soleil became a defining feature of this strand of Tropical Modernism, alongside concrete pilotis that hoisted up structures into dense tree canopies and opened up shady public plazas in cities. Integrated colours and patterns struck up symbiosis with modern music and art; whilst curvilinear shapes (less popular in the more straight-lined Bauhaus modernism) echoed the sweeping beaches and undulating mountains on the horizon.

'Our architecture is important because it has succeeded in adding plastic lyricism and concern for human emotions to the structures in which we live and work,' wrote architect Costa in 1956. He explains how Brazil mastered the art of reinforced concrete, originally used as a cheaper alternative to steel, which then became the defining expression of a more natural national form.

This creative ingenuity attracted international attention, becoming the subject of a MoMA exhibition in 1943 titled ‘Brazil Builds’; its influence reached Europe through Le Corbusier, whose design adopted a looser, more organic style after his visit.

What also defined Brazilian modernism was politics: in the 1930s and 1940s, the government initiated major public and institutional buildings, offering this new style a national platform. President Getúlio Vargas (serving 1930-1945, then 1950-54) championed this strategy. Then, President Juscelino Kubitschek (serving 1956-1961) commissioned the visionary new capital of Brasília. Beyond this, between 1964 and 1985, a right-wing military dictatorship forced Communist architects, including Niemeyer and Vilanova Artigas, into exile, and other architects to retreat from the public stage.

Key representatives

Two loose ‘schools’ emerged from the 1930s. In Rio de Janeiro, Niemeyer was the heart of the Carioca school, promoting humanist modernism rooted in poetry, art and culture: if a building could incite emotion – with sweeping lines of smooth concrete – it would endure socially. This can be seen in the work of Reidy, who with his partner engineer Carmen Portinho, designed the curvy Pedregulho Housing Complex within the city’s undulating topography.

Landscape designer Roberto Burle Marx (1909-1994) is synonymous with the Carioca style: his abstract gardens layered colour, material and texture, very much defining the urban experience of the architecture. Born in São Paulo to German and Brazilian parents, he studied painting in Berlin and then Rio, where he met botanists and later established a garden and tropical, indigenous plant collection.

In São Paulo, architect João Batista Vilanova Artigas (1915-1985) pioneered the Paulista school, embracing a more raw, textured Brutalist approach to concrete and co-founding the influential Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism in São Paulo (FAU-USP). Bold primary colours and geometries of light guided movement through continuous floor plans that encouraged social congregation, especially in urban contexts.

Assistant to the elder Paulista at FAU-USP, architect Paulo Mendes Da Rocha (1928-2021) adopted this weighty Brutalism, further reinforcing the belief that all architectural space is public. His contemporary, São Paulo-based Italian-born Lina Bo Bardi (1914-1992), who worked with Gio Ponti before moving to Brazil, worked within the Paulista spirit, whilst critiquing Modernism and the impact of new constructions on communities.

The legacy of Brazilian modernism

The spirit of Brazilian Modernism continued notably with experimental houses throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s; and in the work of 21st-century architects such as Isay Weinfeld, Studio MK27 and Arthur Casas. During this century, there’s been a period of enhanced drama with gravity-defying, floating volumes achieved with new construction technologies; as well as an even deeper grounding in nature, considering alternative materialities and lighter footprints.

Overall, just like Niemeyer imagined, the legacy of 20th century Brazilian Modernism still very much guides architects of today forwards: its humanism, emotive power, symbiosis with landscape, and utopian ambition endures.

12 key examples of Brazilian modernism

Ministry of Education and Health

When: 1936–43
Where: Rio de Janeiro

Le Corbusier was involved in the early stages, yet this landmark building was designed by a group of local architects, including Lúcio Costa, Oscar Niemeyer, and Affonso Eduardo Reidy; with landscape design by Burle Marx and azulejos tile murals by Candido Portinari.

Pampulha complex

When: 1940-43
Where: Belo Horizonte

Commissioned by Juscelino Kubitschek when he was mayor of Belo Horizonte, the scheme was designed by Oscar Niemeyer as an ensemble of leisure buildings around a lake, including a yacht club, casino and church, all connected by landscape design by Burle Marx and art informed by local tradition.

Canoas House

When: 1951
Where: Rio de Janeiro

Oscar Niemeyer’s third house that he built for his family as a weekend retreat is sensually embedded into tropical nature; a free-flowing, cloud-like concrete roof that shades glass walls, all set upon a platform intersected by rocks.

Museum of Modern Art

When: 1952-1967
Where: Rio de Janeiro

Designed by Affonso Eduardo Reidy, the Brutalist structure of horizontally stacked concrete frames suspending exhibition volumes runs parallel to the city’s coastline surrounded by gardens designed by Burle Marx.

Pedregulho housing

When: 1948-1960
Where: Rio de Janeiro

A radical 260-meter-long serpentine housing block built for local government employees that included communal facilities and murals: it was designed by Affonso Eduardo Reidy in collaboration with Carmen Portinho, head of Rio’s Department for Popular Housing.

Baeta House

When: 1956
Where: São Paulo

Designed by João Batista Vilanova Artigas as a residence for Olga and Sebastião Baeta, the heavy board-marked concrete volume is set upon six pillars, and opens up to the garden with walls of glass.

Brasília

When: 1956-1960
Where: Brasília

President Juscelino Kubitschek commissioned this utopian capital city planned by Lúcio Costa and designed by Oscar Niemeyer, including buildings such as the Planalto Palace, Supreme Federal Court, and National Congress of Brazil.

Casa Mendes da Rocha

When: 1967
Where: São Paulo

A pair of concrete houses by Paulo Mendes Da Rocha for himself and his sister in Butantā: four pillars support the main floor with a modular plan, intersected by a cylinder containing a staircase.

São Paulo Museum of Art (Museu de Arte de São Paulo – MASP)

When: 1968
Where: Rio de Janeiro

Lina Bo Bardi’s design hoisted the concrete museum 8 metres above the ground on thick red pillars, creating a sheltered, permeable civic plaza for people to gather beneath, with light, air and city views flowing through too.

SESC Pompéia

When: 1977- 1986
Where: São Paulo

Lina Bo Bardi adapted a disused 1920s factory building into a culture centre including library, theatre and workshops as a radical act for its time, exposing the architecture’s raw identity, while restoring and reframing it.

Glass House

When: 1952
Where: São Paulo

Immersed in nature once part of the Atlantic Rainforest, a floating glass house with an open plan sits on slender metal piloti: sketched by Lina Bo Bardi, and developed by engineers Luigi Nervi and Túlio Stucchi.

Niterói Contemporary Art Museum (Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói – MAC)

When: 1996
Where: Niterói, Rio de Janeiro

Designed by Oscar Niemeyer with structural engineer Bruno Contarini, this futuristic flying saucer, reached by a curving ramp and elevated above a plaza with a reflective pool, is a sculpture on the coastal landscape.

On the crest of the forested slopes that form the suburbs of Nova Lima, a town in the south-eastern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, sits Xingu House, the most accomplished private residential project to date from Tetro Arquitetura. For the studio, based in nearby Belo Horizonte, this was a dream commission, starting with a completely blank slate and a client willing to push boundaries to make a bold statement.

Step inside Xingu House, a contemporary home in Minas Gerais

‘The client initially approached us before even owning the site,' says Tetro's Carlos Maia. ‘He asked us to help him find a very special plot with abundant nature in Nova Lima. Together, we visited a number of options and eventually found this site.' The 8,000 sq m plot was occupied by an old, rundown house. The bulk of the original structure was demolished, but some key elements, such as the garden walls that divided the landscape into terraces, were retained, thus ensuring the new house felt embedded in its plot from the outset.

Above all, the new owners sought a house with a dramatic presence. ‘The client wanted something genuinely different and innovative,' says Maia. ‘He has a strong interest in sculpture, and the idea of a house with a sculptural presence was part of the brief from day one.' Given the breadth of this request, there was no immediate programmatic solution; instead, the architects continuously iterated the design. ‘We developed it through a long process of study, especially using physical models,' says Maia. ‘We tested how the building could both sit on the existing terraces and keep a direct relationship to the ground, so that daily life could naturally extend outdoors and one could step straight onto the terrain.'

In part, the form was dictated by the available views. ‘There's an extraordinary panorama from the higher portion of the site, looking out to the mountains and hills of Minas Gerais,' Maia says. ‘We wanted the architecture to preserve and amplify that experience.' The result is a house that pinwheels around a central axis, raised up above ground level, with the living and sleeping areas arranged in three wings.

One of these wings, housing the primary suite, is cantilevered over the slope, while the other two touch the ground lightly at the top of the site. This form is supported by six hefty concrete pillars, whose faceted forms give an angular brutality to the ensemble, while also housing key elements, such as the stairs, bathrooms and an lift. The pillars can clearly be seen through the glass façades of the upper level, their ‘inhabitable thickness' anchoring the house to the terrace and the site.

Concrete was the most appropriate choice for the construction, especially given the relationship between the thick, cast-in-situ pillars and the existing stone terraces. The latter have been repurposed as a generous outdoor living space, complete with sitting and dining areas, a kitchen, two reflecting ponds and a swimming pool. A grotto embedded in the existing walls is now the wine and cheese cellar.

Despite the effortless appearance of the new house above its weathered site, Tetro faced numerous obstacles during construction. ‘The pillars are highly complex, organic geometries, developed through a triangulated “faceting” logic,' says Maia. ‘We had to design and coordinate the pattern triangle by triangle, and the on-site formwork required real precision.' Wherever raw concrete is visible, both outside and in, the finish is meticulous. The large floor and ceiling slabs also had to be poured in place.

With the primary suite occupying the house's most dramatic component, along with a secondary suite, two more bedrooms, an office and a self-contained guest suite are located in the other wing. The hollow concrete columns that puncture the floor slab house bathrooms and staircases, with roof lights bringing daylight into these cavernous forms. Meanwhile, a separate structure houses a spa, sauna and gym.

A linear kitchen occupies the central part of the plan, with an extended concrete counter that becomes the dining table. From here, one heads to the main living wing, which extends to the final tip, with a ribbon of glass offering up views across the site and beyond, culminating in a balcony. Key pieces of art and furniture are interspersed around the generous 1,800 sq m floor area, including a striking balancing sculpture made of steel and glass by Brazilian artist Túlio Pinto.

Acknowledging that the house ‘embodies the client's boldness and desire for innovation', Maia and his co-founders, Débora Mendes and Igor Macedo, along with the rest of the Tetro team, describe it as a demonstration of the practice's search for freedom of approach within every project. ‘Xingu House represents one of our most significant formal investigations to date,' Maia concludes. ‘[The project] brings together our recurring interest in the relationship between architecture and landscape with a new level of structural and sculptural experimentation.'

Rising dramatically above its site, the house is a contemporary take on the geometric exuberance of high Brazilian modernism, sensuous and sculptural yet also implicitly tied to its location.

tetro.com.br

Wallpaper’s July 2026 Design Directory is available from 4 June, in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

For the third edition of its philanthropic initiative dedicated to introducing children to design through collaborative creative workshops, Galerie Philia partnered with designer Gisela Simas, working with students, aged 9-11, from underserved communities and underprivileged neighbourhoods in the Brazilian city of Petrópolis. The initiative (which we last showcased in its debut iteration in 2022) seeks to foster meaningful encounters between designers and younger generations, exploring how design can become a tool for education, creativity and environmental awareness.

This time around, over several months, the children participated in a series of workshops exploring the relationship between nature, material and form, and paid visits to Marambaia Farm, whose gardens were designed by renowned landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx. This allowed the students to closely observe natural structures and organic forms, which became the starting point for their creative proposals. Guided by Simas, they were invited to imagine and draw their own furniture sculptures and, with the help of expert craftsmen, including Thomaz Brasil, Tomé Peregrino, Cláudio, Paulo Pissurno and Vinícius César, these were then transformed into design pieces crafted from wood collected from fallen trees. Each work reflects both the imagination of its young author, as well as a broader message about sustainability and material reuse.

The finished pieces – which include a sculpture by fifth-grader Fellype, a lamp by fourth-grader Davi and a coat rack by fifth-grader Eduarda – were shown at an exhibition at Petropolis’ Crystal Palace in May before travelling to São Paulo for a second showing. The works will now be presented in a charitable auction on 9 June 2026, alongside works by internationally acclaimed artists and sculptural designers selected by Galerie Philia. Each student’s piece is conceived as part of a limited edition; in the event of a sale, additional editions (2/8 onwards) will be produced. All proceeds from the auction, as well as from any subsequent sales, will be entirely dedicated to supporting and expanding the Philia & Kids initiative.

galerie-philia.com

On this newly completed Brazilian house, Lucas Padovani, founder of his eponymous architecture firm, says: ‘The main challenge was to implant the residence on a sloped site in a natural and integrated way.' He is reflecting on the development of Alameda House, a residence nestled in Bragança Paulista, a municipality in the state of São Paulo, Brazil.

Step inside a new Brazilian house by Padovani Arquitetos

The project's solution was centred on its orthogonal footprint – a concrete slab designed to contain a balance of both solid forms and voids, resulting in a fluid, organic-feeling interior. Padovani continues: ‘In addition, it was essential to reconcile the privacy of the intimate areas with the openness of the social spaces, articulating a more rational logic with moments of softness to create a continuous experience where light, shadow, and architecture are in balanced dialogue.’

The softness within the project is expressed through curved details and a flowing, flexible circulation. The new house is positioned slightly above street level. The main social areas unfold as visitors climb up a few steps, while a secondary access is located along the side façade. The living room, lounge and dining areas are found on this first level, along with the kitchen and a home theatre, as well as the primary bedroom.

On the top level are five bedrooms, accessed via a generous two-level ramp, perhaps one of the most striking architectural features within the project. Padovani explains: ‘It’s more than a functional element, it guides the gaze and gradually reveals the architecture, as natural light continuously transforms the perception of space through framed views, cast shadows, and variations in luminosity.’

The intention was to establish a clear and quiet relationship between the home and its surroundings – where architecture and landscape complement one another. Padovani was clear that he wanted topography, vegetation, and solar exposure to shift from mere constraints to active elements, shaping the spatial experience.

‘The primary inspiration was the pursuit of a sensitive balance between permanence and lightness, expressed not only in form but also in the way natural light moves through and reveals the architecture,’ says the architect. ‘The house was conceived to articulate both the experience of movement – marked by subtle transitions of light and shadow – and that of permanence, accommodating moments of gathering and family life, especially on weekends.’

The materiality is honest and bears a contemporary feel. Stone walls and tresuno wood add warmth and texture, nodding to the playful juxtaposition between hard and soft elements in the architectural design.

Padovani hopes that when stepping in, visitors will feel immersed in a welcoming and serene atmosphere, defined by the organic connection between interior and exterior. He says: ‘Ultimately, the aim is for the house to convey a sense of balance – between solidity and lightness, architecture and nature – within a continuous and harmonious spatial experience.’

padovaniarquitetos.com

For the first time, the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair includes a curated section focused on Afro-Brazilian art and artists. Titled, ‘1-54 Presents: Brazil Beyond Brazil’, the presentation debuts at this year’s edition of 1-54 New York (13-17 May 2026).

According to the organisers, the section draws on archival research, reinterprets modernist legacies, and interrogates the construction of national and art historical narratives, pushing back against the often narrow framing of Afro-Brazilian art. The section will feature artworks by Black Brazilian artists such as Ana Claudia Almeida, Rebeca Carapiá, Helô Sanvoy, Jaime Lauriano, Luana Vitra, Diego Mouro, No Martins, Rommulo Vieira Conceição, Mônica Ventura and Lidia Lisbôa, presented by leading Brazilian galleries including Almeida & Dale, Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, Nara Roesler and Aura.

The work on view showcases the diversity of Afro-Brazilian art and highlights Black Brazilian history and art history, the complexity of Black Brazilian experiences, and the cultural links between Africa and Latin America. A former Portuguese colony, Brazil was a major destination of the transatlantic slave trade. It has the largest population of Black people outside Africa, with more than half of its population identifying as Black or of African heritage.

Brazilian curator, art historian and professor Igor Simões, who organised ‘1-54 Presents: Brazil Beyond Brazil’, tells Wallpaper* the idea came in part from noticing the absence of Black Brazilian artists in African diasporic art history. Another reason, he adds, is the fetishisation, exoticism and expectations of Afro-Brazilian art, especially as viewed through a global lens.

'I think it’s exciting for [Afro-Brazilian artists and art] to be centre stage rather than on the sidelines,' says Touria El Glaoui, the founding director of 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair.

In late 2025, Glaoui, alongside about two dozen people, including ten US-based emerging Black collectors, travelled to São Paulo on a trip organised by 1-54 and ISE-DA (a contemporary art advisory which specializes in art in Africa and its diaspora with a focus on cultivating the next generation of Black collectors, founded by Nigerian art advisor Adefolakunmi Adenugba), in partnership with Latitude, a platform supporting Brazilian galleries abroad and Cutuca Projetos Culturais.

There, the team met with Simões, who helped curate meetings with Black Brazilian artists, art professionals, collectors, and cultural leaders, as well as visits to the studios of artists including Moisés Silva Patrício, galleries, institutions, residencies, collections, and art spaces, all focused on Afro-Brazilian art. There was also a guided tour of the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, curated by the Cameroonian Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, which featured several artists from Africa and its diaspora, as well as some artists now featured in ‘1-54 Presents: Brazil Beyond Brazil’.

The decision to have the section at the 2026 edition of 1-54 New York was inspired by the visit to São Paulo and conversations with curator Simões, says Glaoui, aligning with 1-54 New York’s expanding focus on spotlighting art from the African diaspora, with dedicated Caribbean and African American sections in recent years. Those visits, tours and conversations brought to the fore the incredible and diverse work of Afro-Brazilian artists and the challenges they face, including insufficient visibility and support, compared to their counterparts.

The new section will be helpful in 'shifting the gaze to [Afro-Brazilian] creativity in Brazil that has often been ignored and not given the right visibility', says Glaoui, adding that it will showcase the exuberance of Afro-Brazilian artists and art, and also be useful for people who might not be knowledgeable about Black Brazilian history.

In addition to featuring in the curated Brazil section, São Paulo-based Aura is one of more than 20 galleries showing work at the wider 1-54 New York, which opens on 13 May at the Starrett-Lehigh Building. Aura makes its debut at the fair alongside galleries from Africa, the Caribbean, Europe and the Americas, including Nassau-based The Current: Baha Mar Gallery & Art Center, New York-based Tanya Weddemire Gallery and Lagos-based Adegbola Gallery, which presents ‘To Carry My Cross’, a solo show of new work by London-based, Nigerian artist Aaron Kudi, who makes abstract paintings with acrylic, enamel paint, ink and liquid metal, glazed tarpaulin and cotton duck canvas.

Returning galleries include Geneva and Abidjan-based Filafriques, Paris- and Venice-based 193 Gallery, Johannesburg-based Kumalo Turpin, Lagos-based O'DA Art, Washington DC-based Gallery Article 15, Baltimore-based Galerie Myrtis and New York-based Kates-Ferri Projects, which presents a group show, ‘Mirrored Histories & Woven Futures’, with work by Damien Davis, Samuel Nnorom and Dana Robinson, who is inspired by 1970s Ebony magazines and explores themes including Black female identity through media such as printmaking, painting, collage and textiles.

The special projects for this edition include Black Forest, an installation by artist and assistant director of media arts and sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ekene Ijeoma. It seeks to address environmental disparities in Black communities through strategies such as tree planting. Black Forest Library features 40 books, 40 plants, 40 seeds and artworks. Black Forest School, billed as a travelling series of programmes and spaces focused on Black and non-white perspectives in nature, debuts at the fair.

Another special project is Entanglements by TM Arthouse, launched by Tout-Monde Art Foundation, which brings together Caribbean and Amazonian artists such as Nyugen Smith, Chantalea Commin, Tania L Balan-Gaubert, Ramses Serrano, Johan Amiemba, and Edouard Duval-Carrié, with works across embroidery, wood, metal, sculpture and photography examining entanglement as a historical and ongoing force shaping the region.

A third special project to look out for is Collective Practices of Refusal across the Black Atlantic, by TZ Production Company and Vilanismo, a collective of Black Brazilian male artists, which addresses the conditions under which Black life is made visible by exploring themes such as autonomy and self-representation.

1-54 New York 2026 runs between 13 and 17 May at the Starrett-Lehigh Building in Chelsea

1-54.com/new-york

Valente is the newest building from design-focused developers Idea!Zarvos and their third collaboration with Brazilian architects FGMF. Rising up above the São Paulo skyline, on a 1,400 sq m plot at the intersection of Cardeal Arcoverde and Capote Valente in the city’s popular Pinheiros district, Valenta is a mixed-use structure with a dynamic, expressive façade that offers up a multiplicity of views, inside and out.

Explore Valente in São Paulo

The new structure consists of 21 floors above ground and four basements, home to apartments, offices and a curated selection of shops and restaurants that create a new and active ground floor to connect with the rest of the neighbourhood. New planting and landscape design by Rodrigo Oliveira further connect Valente to its Pinheiros neighbours, with wider pavements and places to sit.

The dynamic façade incorporates balconies and single- and double-height terraces, with duplex and triplex apartments blending with commercial units. Flexibility is the watchword, with some units incorporating high ceilings and mezzanines. The building covers a total of 15,000 sq m. On the 17th floor, space has been created for a potential restaurant and ‘suspended plaza’ that overlooks the city, complete with 4.5 m high ceilings. The very top floors are given over to rental apartments.

‘We designed Valente from the inside out,’ says FGMF’s Fernando Forte, ‘Idea!Zarvos’ concept was based on a three-dimensional occupation of corporate space, with triplex and duplex units that allow spatial arrangements very different from those typically found in the market, highly adaptable to occupants’ needs.’

The form of the many balconies and distinctive layered façade was defined by regulations, preserving a sense of privacy and individuality across all the units.

The added benefit is a constantly changing façade, with the deep window reveals creating a geometric pattern of light and shade that shifts throughout the day. A true vertical city, the impression of a stacked and layered structure also reflects Valente’s multiple uses.

‘Our intention with Valente was to create a place where people could live, work and move around with greater ease,’ says Idea!Zarvos founder Otavio Zarvos, ‘We’re just a few steps from Clínicas station, as well as services, culture and meaningful experiences, [so it] completely transforms one’s relationship with the city. We wanted a project that would simplify daily life while opening up new possibilities for interaction and the use of urban space.’

The new building is a showcase for the Idea!Zarvos approach, with a consistent agenda of design-led buildings that address their surroundings. Over 20 years, the firm has collaborated with many leading architects and designers, including projects with Isay Weinfeld, Andrade Morettin and Studio MK27 (on the Ourânia building).

FGMF, founded in 1999 by Fernando Forte, Lourenço Gimenes, and Rodrigo Marcondes Ferraz, have continued their working relationship with the developers on Valente. You can explore a wide selection of FGMF’s residential work on Wallpaper.com, including recent projects like the Forest House, Sliding Pergolas House, Casa Subtração, Casa Colina, Neblina House and Casa Mirante.

This new house in the woods of Brazil brings a beloved typology to the 21st century. Casa Pinhal, in the heart of the country's Mantiqueira Mountains, is the newest residential offering from Brazilian studio Cornetta Arquitetura. Responding to the client's brief for a holiday home to relax and host extended family, the architects worked hard to craft not only a contemporary dwelling, comfortable and fitting for its climate and context, but also one that engages with the stunning surrounding natural environment.

Tour Casa Pinhal, a house in the woods

The team designed the home for a couple and their guests, almost as a viewing platform – open and transparent so that its users can take in the leafy surrounds at every turn and have the impression of walking among trees. This meant planning the nearly-700 sq m home upwards, raising it on stilts and using stacked, vertical sections, instead of having the residence sprawl across the land.

The building is arranged in two large wings, united like a bridge. Three main floors bring together private and social areas. The lower floor contains a garage, a TV room and a guest suite. The piano nobile middle level features the living spaces, including a home gym and the primary bedroom suite. Meanwhile, the top level contains more bedrooms and a home office.

The architects employed sustainable architecture strategies to ensure as light a footprint as possible, prioritising the preservation of the forested site. The construction frame is engineered timber, while passive thermal comfort strategies place the accent on working with the local climate, rather than against it.

The material selection, inside and out, reflects this approach too, centred on wood and local moledo stone. Meanwhile, some concrete elements add a modern touch.

One of the scheme's highlights is its large, 'belvedere' terrace, which allows the residents to lounge and look out to the green scenery unfolding beyond.

cornettaarquitetura.com.br

Floating in a canopy of trees, an exhibition pavilion designed by São Paulo-based architects Andrade Morettin marks the cultural epicentre of a future neighbourhood for the Brazilian city of Campinas. Fusing nature, views and community purpose, the modern treehouse encapsulates the aspirations of Casa Figueira, an urban district developed by Iguatemi that broke ground in 2025 and will eventually accommodate 50,000 residents.

Tour the pavilion at Casa Figueira

Expanding the concept of a marketing suite, the pavilion is rather a place of inspiration aiming to spark dialogue between developers, residents, and the public. Its sky-bridge crosses from the land to a platform suspended 24-metres above the gardens of the historic Fazenda Brandina coffee estate, around which this new district will grow.

Surrounded by planting, the structure is built of eucalyptus-based Glulam timber, sourced from a local reforestation production chain, and steel manufactured in Brazil. It’s wrapped in glass windows and terraces shaded by the over-hanging roof – a contemporary interpretation of Brazilian modernism that immerses visitors in the emerging urban and environmental landscape (the project will eventually feature a park designed by Brazilian landscape architect Isabel Duprat).

The design balances 'contemplation and anticipation,' explains Carlos Jereissati, board member at Iguatemi, and former CEO whose family founded the company in 1966. 'The architecture frames the horizon, allowing you to look out and imagine what the neighbourhood will become,' he says.

Inside, urban ideas will be explored across interactive urban models, a 150-seat auditorium and flexible event and exhibition spaces. Topics up for discussion will span from smart cities to 15-minute cities, and a series of evolving questions about public space, quality of life, and inclusivity will be posed.

'Andrade Morettin’s architecture has a precision and lightness that felt very aligned with what this first building needed to be: not an object, but a framework for experience,' explains Jereissati.

This vessel continues the international research that has contributed to the development of Casa Figueira. Responding to the challenges of Brazilian cities today, its polycentric masterplan creates a more integrated and human-scaled urban environment. Over one million square meters, 100 mixed-use towers will be woven together with amenities, parks and sustainable infrastructure.

It’s Iguatemi’s first urban district and most ambitious project to date, anchored to the Iguatemi Campinas shopping centre originally established in 1980. For Jereissati, many insights can be translated from retail to urbanism: 'Iguatemi has spent decades understanding how people move, meet, spend time together and seek quality in their daily lives. That experience is very relevant here, because successful urban spaces also depend on convenience, comfort, identity, and a strong sense of place.'

The pavilion, therefore, performs as a receptacle between past and future. Its architecture by Andrade Morettin is rooted in the values of Brazilian modernism, whilst initiating a design language that will contribute to the future district. Meanwhile, a symbolic fig tree represents Casa Figueira’s commitment to bringing green spaces to its residents, whilst connecting back in time to a 200-year-old fig tree in the old garden of the estate.

Though the pavilion’s architectural footprint treads lightly and is relatively minuscule compared to the vast weight and scale of the district’s construction, its suspended presence over time and ability to inspire collective reflection intend to make a lasting impact. 'It is both a preview and a platform: a way to build a shared understanding of what this new urban centrality can become,' concludes Jereissati.

casafigueiracampinas.com.br

andrademorettin.com.br

When Ian Schrager created the ‘boutique hotel’ concept – first with Andrée Putman at Morgans in 1984, then with Philippe Starck at the Royalton, Delano, and more – he launched a five-decade transformation of the world’s gateway cities. Stylish lobbies, destination restaurants, and rooftop bars became magnets for travellers and locals alike, redefining urban hospitality from New York to London, Miami to Paris. But São Paulo, one of the world’s largest and most dynamic urban centres, remained an outlier. For decades, this metropolis of 20 million had only a handful of boutique properties that captured its cultural energy and met the global standard for sophisticated travellers.

But at the recent South American Hotel Investment Conference in Rio de Janeiro, industry professionals were discussing what has become a boom in high-end hotel development in Brazil – and how to keep it going in the face of war and other geopolitical risks, rising energy costs, and stubbornly high interest rates.

Despite headwinds, both new and old, Brazil has more than 150 upscale and luxury hotel projects that have recently opened or are currently in development, according to industry reports – a stark contrast to the high-profile handful that defined the market just five years ago.

The momentum behind Brazil’s hotel expansion

São Paulo’s boutique hotel market started with the Emiliano in 2001, the city’s first true luxury boutique hotel, launched by the Filgueiras family in the exclusive neighbourhood of Jardins and designed by Arthur Casas. Just a year later came the Hotel Unique, an iconic building and boutique hotel by Ruy Ohtake – its ‘unique’ form still helping to define the cityscape. In 2003, the original Fasano Hotel São Paulo opened – designed by then-partners Isay Weinfeld and Marcio Kogan – a timeless, luxurious masterpiece that honours the Fasano family’s four-generation legacy as Brazil’s finest restaurateurs.

For over 20 years, these were the only independent properties that reflected local character and met the global standard for a luxury boutique travel experience – largely due to market conditions that contributed to shaky investor confidence – both foreign and domestic – in the Brazilian hotel space.

But when French developer Alexandre Allard launched the Rosewood São Paulo in January 2022 – designed by Philippe Starck – the property became the tipping point for the Brazilian hotel market. Shortly after, in 2023, Fasano added a second hotel and branded residences – almost 20 years to the day of the original Fasano launch – designed by Studio MK27, in the buzzing neighbourhood of Itaim. Then, in early 2024, hotelier Otávio Suriani launched the Pulso Hotel in the Pinheiros neighbourhood, also designed by Arthur Casas. Suriani is also developing a second Pulso Hotel in São Paulo, set to open in 2029.

These properties were just the start of a pipeline that seemingly has no end in sight – the result of major shifts in the Brazilian market. ‘Three forces have converged to transform Brazil’s hotel market. First, domestic institutional investment funds and REITs – now fully regulated and active on Brazil’s B3, the second-largest in the Americas – gave developers a clear exit strategy. Second, post-pandemic domestic tourism hit record highs. Third, international capital finally viewed Brazil as a stable bet for luxury hospitality investments,’ says Laurent DeKousmaeker, head of Latin American Development at Marriott International.

DeKousmaeker launched São Paulo’s first W Hotel in early 2025, and an ambitious new Westin concept by Brazilian architect Jayme Bernardo in June of the same year. He and his partners are planning 98 new hotels in Brazil over the next five years. The other major brands have similarly ambitious plans with their development partners.

But perhaps no single developer is as bullish on Brazil as Alexandre Allard, who launched Soho House São Paulo in 2024, next to his own Rosewood property, both located just off iconic Avenida Paulista. He is also launching his own luxury hotel brand, Allard, with properties under development in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, both designed by Arthur Casas.

Beyond Allard, Rio de Janeiro’s hotel pipeline is robust. Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts recently announced a complete renovation of Ipanema’s Marina Palace Hotel, expected to open in 2029 as Four Seasons Hotel Rio de Janeiro at Leblon, designed by Patricia Anastassiadis. Her São Paulo-based namesake firm has also designed an elegant remodel of the Sofitel Rio de Janeiro Ipanema, scheduled to open in November 2026. Just 45km outside Rio, in Maricá, local developers Maraey have partnered with Marriott International to create an environmentally and socially responsible destination resort complex, including a Ritz-Carlton Reserve, a JW Marriott, and a hotel themed after the famous Rock in Rio music festival, part of Marriott’s Autograph Collection, all opening in late 2026.

Also not far from Rio, the Emiliano Hotel Paraty is under development in the namesake historic colonial town and Unesco World Heritage Site that is an important part of Brazilian history. With architecture by Norman Foster, the project exemplifies another reason for the increase in ‘new’ hotel projects.

‘There are some really special projects that were started years ago, and it took a long time to get through Brazil’s environmental approvals process. Those are also coming online now, adding to the momentum we are seeing in the market. The Emiliano Paraty is over 15 years in the making – hard to believe for those outside Brazil, but that has been the reality here,’ says Gustavo Filgueiras. We first reported on Emiliano Paraty in our June 2010 Born in Brazil issue.

‘It isn’t just São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro that are booming,’ DeKousmaeker adds. ‘Secondary markets in the Northeast, the Central-West, and the South are bubbling too. It’s almost everywhere. It’s an exciting time for hospitality in Brazil.’

In Ceará, on Brazil’s northeast coast, the Mana Hotel Cumbuco exemplifies this secondary-market momentum, bringing contemporary Brazilian design to one of the country’s most spectacular beach destinations. Designed by Guilherme Torres, it is an example of how sophisticated, yet locally relevant properties are proliferating in locations once overlooked by luxury travellers. Torres is applying the same modern gestalt, articulated in humble, local materials, on his second hotel in the area, the Silêncio Hotel, where carnauba straw roofs and hand-packed mud walls frame an open-air layout designed for Ceará’s year-round warmth.

The Central-West region, which includes the farmlands on the tropical savanna around Brasília and the southernmost portion of the Amazon, is also seeing unprecedented development activity. Perhaps the most luxurious addition planned is Arthur Casas’ luxury boutique hotel in the perfectly preserved town of Belterra, Pará. The hotel is currently being crafted from restored houses built by Henry Ford as part of a major area of revival anchored by the new Museum of Amazonian Science (featured in the May 2023 issue of Wallpaper*). Ford built an entire town of matching green and white buildings in 1934 to support rubber farming activities for his factories, all in the style of his hometown of Dearborn, Michigan. Ford’s rubber empire collapsed within a decade, but Belterra’s Midwestern American architecture – preserved as a national heritage site – now offers one of Brazil’s most surreal juxtapositions: white clapboard houses with front porches adjacent to the Tapajós River and the Amazon forest.

The southern region of Santa Catarina is a hotbed for development too, highlighted by a high-profile conversion just outside the state capital and an elegant new-build launch by a familiar name, near an up-and-coming city. In November 2025, the renowned Ponta dos Ganchos Resort became Awasi Santa Catarina, bringing the Chilean luxury brand’s adventure-driven concept – featuring private nature guides and personal 4x4 vehicles – to Brazil’s protected Atlantic Rainforest, near the increasingly popular city of Florianópolis. Yet another Emiliano Hotel is under construction here, too. The project is north of Florianópolis, in Santa Catarina, outside of Balneário Camboriú, the city known as the ‘Dubai of Brazil’ for its own building boom. The Emiliano Santa Catarina also features architecture by Norman Foster and stunning interiors by Patricia Anastassiadis, and will include both a hotel and luxury residences.

The boom signals more than just hotel development – it reflects Brazil’s emergence as a mature luxury market capable of supporting the kind of design-driven hospitality that has long defined global gateway cities. For the first time, Brazilian cities can compete not just on price or exoticism, but on design, service, and brand prestige. While Brazil’s hotel boom includes both international and domestic brands that deliver all three, there is only one homegrown company that is doing so abroad.

After opening in exclusive Brazilian destinations such as Angra dos Reis and Trancoso, Fasano Hotels has expanded abroad. That growth started in 2010 with a property designed by Isay Weinfeld in the chic summer playground of Punta del Este, Uruguay, then New York City, and now there is a beachfront Miami property under construction – all under the leadership of partner and head of hotel development Constantino Regis Bittencourt.

Constantino Regis Bittencourt and Gero Fasano are also entering Europe, with projects underway in London, Cascais, Sardinia, and Milan, which marks the family’s return home, four generations after leaving for Brazil in 1902. With the purchase of the 16th-century Palazzo Taverna in the city’s Quadrilatero della Moda, or Fashion District, the project marks a full-circle moment for the brand and signals that Fasano is quickly growing into a global luxury brand to rival many of the traditional names. But unlike its global competitors, Fasano is already established in virtually all of Brazil’s best destinations. The group remains truly independent, and its celebrated 124-year culinary history has become the ultimate competitive advantage, proving that Brazilian hospitality can compete on the world stage, even if the home market is still catching up.

For her most recent project in São Paulo, Brazilian architect Fernanda Marques drew inspiration from a recent trip to Japan – ‘particularly on the quiet, contemplative islands of Naoshima,’ she says.

She was entranced by the work of Tadao Ando, a master of light and concrete. ‘I became deeply aware of the power of thresholds - of pauses, voids, and transitions,’ she says. That design approach is at the heart of what she’s called The Edge house.

Marques was tasked to create a modern family residence by renovating an older house on the site. The architect and her team worked with the existing structure, selecting and preserving only the essential elements of the original construction.

‘In Edge House, architecture becomes less about form and more about experience - an ever-shifting interplay between interior and exterior, solidity and void, where each boundary is less a limit and more an invitation,’ Marques explains.

The home’s dialogue between openness and enclosure allows for a retreat-like quality and a relaxed spirit of a summer house - perfect for Marques’ clients, a couple with two infants and two teenagers. To meet the needs of the different age groups, the house was redesigned to accommodate spaces for all – especially for the adults who enjoy amenities like a gym, sauna and spa.

It was a challenging task, Marques says. ‘The house needed to support different routines, age groups and moments, from spaces dedicated to children to more private areas, from social gatherings to quieter, more introspective environments,’ she explains.

So she approached the four-level house as a series of layers, ones that accommodate all of the family’s needs but spatially felt seamless. 'I was interested in how each space could unfold into the next, without rupture, allowing the house to be experienced as a continuous sequence,’ Marques says.

The team delivered on their goal; the integration of spaces unfolds naturally. Materiality is at the core of the design cohesion that prevails. The use of travertine marble and slatted wood is central to the material language and continues across both façade and interiors.

The building's entrance hall is Marques’ favourite element: ‘It concentrates many of the intentions behind the project, the relationship with nature, the control of light, and the articulation of space through sequence rather than form alone.’

Coupled with the entry sequence, the vertical garden is also central to the home's experience, nodding to the owners' indoor-outdoor lifestyle. The residence expands across four floors, which host the children’s and primary bedrooms, a wellness space, a TV room, and social and leisure areas.

‘I would like visitors to experience a sense of calm, along with a subtle shift from the rhythm of the city,’ Marque reflects.. ‘The house does not reveal itself all at once. It invites a slower reading, where movement, pause and perception become part of the experience.’

If there’s one thing that Wallpaper* does well, it’s houses – spotlighting architecturally arresting gems from around the globe and spanning the spectrum of modern design. Our inboxes are overflowing with news of the world’s most boundary-pushing architectural projects, and we strive to bring you the very best.

To ensure you don’t miss a thing – and to showcase the scope of residential architecture today – we’ve launched a monthly series: The Architecture Edit. Each instalment will highlight our favourite houses of the month: buildings that demonstrate creative planning, innovative methods and, of course, aesthetic excellence. Here are the best new houses of March 2026.

A house between mountains

Set between Brazil’s Serra do Mar and Serra da Mantiqueira mountains, Valley House is architect Beatriz Meyer’s family home. Built on a rural plateau, the single-storey, horizontal structure is designed to blend into its landscape rather than dominate it. It’s divided into three volumes using glass, stone and carbonised timber, balancing transparency and solidity, while open-plan interiors emphasise light, airflow and connection to nature with pergolas and apertures framing views. The house embodies Meyer’s vision of calm, sustainable living, rooted in place.

Read about it here.

A Gujarat behemoth

Amaltash, a 12,000 sq ft home in Navsari, India, combines technical precision with cultural meaning. Designed by Veeram Shah, it embodies Le Corbusier’s idea of the home as both a ‘machine for living’ and a space rich in symbolic meaning. Climate-responsive design drives its form, with solar strategies shaping layout, patios cooling interiors, and large windows – the house operates as a micro-ecosystem, with rainwater harvesting and greenery replacing lawns. At the same time, it draws on Gujarati traditions. Crafted with local materials and artisan collaborations, Amaltash merges sustainability and heritage.

Read about it here.

A Canadian forest retreat

Nestled in British Columbia’s Coast Mountains, the Passive House Forest Retreat is a highly sustainable home designed to rigorous environmental standards. Its treehouse-like structure sits lightly on a forested slope, featuring a cantilevered volume that frames expansive views while creating a sheltered space below. Dark cladding and natural materials allow it to blend with its surroundings, while precise construction ensures top-tier energy performance. Interiors, meanwhile, complement the architecture with refined detailing and sculptural lighting.

Read about it here.

An unusual floorplan

Trim House in Vilnius, Lithuania, is a striking triangular residence shaped by unexpected planning restrictions. Originally designed larger, the project was reduced by 40 per cent after new regulations limited building size. Rather than compromise, architect Robert Konieczny reimagined the design into a compact, angular form centred around a courtyard. A spiral staircase leads to upper-level bedrooms and a terrace, while expanded outdoor space improves daylight and connection to the surroundings. The enforced ‘trimming' ultimately enhanced the project, proving constraints can inspire innovative architectural solutions.

Read about it here.

A modernist landmark

Designed in 1946 by Rudolph Schindler, the Kallis-Sharlin Residence is a modernist hillside home in Los Angeles. Built into a slope overlooking the San Fernando Valley, its layered volumes, terraces and glass walls blur indoor and outdoor boundaries, and distinctive features include a butterfly roof, clerestory lighting and rich materials like mahogany and Douglas fir. Recently restored and listed for sale at $6.35 million, this cultural monument stands as a lasting example of a modernist architecture that harmonises innovation, landscape and human experience.

Read about it here.

A bright red villa

Villa Jevany in the Czech Republic boldly contrasts its forest setting with a vivid red façade. Designed by Architektura, the house intentionally stands out rather than blending in, creating a dialogue between man-made form and nature. Built into a sloping site, it appears single-storey from the road but reveals additional levels below. Inside, a central staircase leads to a spacious living area with forest views, while irregular windows reference abstract art. Divided into active and quiet zones, the home balances striking visual identity with functional, family-oriented design.

Read about it here.

A timber house

Orchard House in Cheshire exemplifies thoughtful rural architecture. Designed by Studio Bark under strict UK planning rules, the home demonstrates exceptional design quality while remaining modest and energy-efficient. Its S-shaped plan spans two levels, with living spaces elevated for views across a restored orchard. Timber construction, passive design strategies and local materials reduce environmental impact, including parquet flooring made from a tree on-site. Over time, the house has blended into its landscape, aided by weathered cladding and revived planting, now representing a balance between contemporary, sustainable living and deep connection to place.

Read about it here.

A traditional Kyoto residence

House in Narutaki is a sensitive renovation of a traditional Sukiya-style home in Kyoto by kooo architects. Respecting strict preservation norms, the design maintains the building’s historic character while adapting it for modern living. Original tatami spaces were reconfigured into three flowing zones, including a garden room and connecting passage, while natural materials, sliding doors and handcrafted details preserve cultural authenticity. The result is a calm, minimalist home that honours Japanese tradition while providing a refined, contemporary living experience.

Read about it here.

A Jacques Couëlle-designed home

This organic modernist home near Cannes, originally designed by Jacques Couëlle in the 1960s, has been carefully refreshed by Miriam Frowein Interiors. Distinctive for its sculptural, fluid forms, the house exemplifies Couëlle’s ‘architecture-sculpture’. The renovation respects his vision, using organic shapes, earthy tones and handcrafted elements throughout, as well as mid-century-inspired furnishings to complement rather than compete with the architecture. The design approach allows the building’s expressive form to remain central while enhancing comfort and livability for contemporary use.

Read about it here.

A hidden island escape

Euthea, a house on the Greek island of Meganisi, is designed to disappear into its landscape. Created by Ateno Architecture Studio, it is partially buried and covered by earth, making it nearly invisible from above. As the first structure on its peninsula, the project prioritises minimal environmental impact – built with local stone and earthy tones, it blends seamlessly with its surroundings. Interiors are arranged to frame sea views, enhancing the sense of isolation and immersion in nature. Even functional elements, like a brass drainage pipe, are treated poetically, reinforcing the home’s quiet, thoughtful integration.

Read about it here.

Brazilian architect Arthur Casas is a deft hand when it comes to crafting the perfect retreat. With his country's modernist legacy as part of his vocabulary and a desire to attune his designs to their respective settings, he has worked on some of Brazil's finest homes, including Pacaembu House and an apartment in Vila Nova Conceição, both in São Paulo. His newest completion, Bravissima House, is a contemporary escape set among the foliage of its forested site in the southern state of Santa Catarina – and follows its author's approach and residential explorations.

Step inside Bravissima House by Arthur Casas

The home is located within a steeply sloped site in the region of Itajaí. Ocean views on one side and a rich, leafy forest on the other make for a home with expansive, 360-degree vistas – a fact the architecture team made the most of, dotting the design with large open-air spaces and terraces overlooking the natural views.

Repurposing an existing structure on site, Arthur Casas and his architects transformed the old building's bones into a sleek, modern residence serving as an escape for a family of four. The owners enjoy hosting and entertaining guests, so ample living spaces attached to those long views were a must from the get-go.

Inside, Bravissima House spans two main levels. The lower one contains the bedrooms – three of them, one being a generous primary suite with its own workspace – a family room, a home gym and a cinema room. The upper floor is dedicated solely to the entertainment spaces in an almost single, flowing interior that blends indoor and outdoor living. A kitchen is cleverly partitioned off to one side for discreet food preparation as needed.

The home's material palette emphasises the site's pristine natural character, and is composed predominantly of wood, stone (including Vermont limestone) and simple, tactile plastered walls. Brushed metal details add cool accents throughout.

The interiors were decorated by the studio too, featuring pieces designed by Arthur Casas, such as the ‘Fusca’ sofa, the ‘Construflama’ fireplace, and the ‘Aiso’ coffee table. Further items include the ‘Cubo’ sofa by Jorge Zalszupin, the ‘PL61’ armchairs by Percival Lafer and a sideboard by Sérgio Rodrigues. Contemporary art by artists such as Mano Penalva and José Bechara punctuates the space.

A naturalistic landscape-architecture scheme by Renata Tilli ensures the project blends seamlessly with its wild surroundings, working with the existing topography and the site's indigenous vegetation.

The architects explain: 'Casa Bravíssima creates routes and perspectives that seamlessly connect interior and exterior, opening spaces to the landscape while balancing functionality, comfort, and natural presence. The project functions as an extension of the site, offering an experience that highlights vegetation and topography and reinforces the relationship between architecture and its surroundings.'

arthurcasas.com

Explore more projects by Arthur Casas in his 2023 monograph

Set in a serene location, this Brazilian house sits low, its long horizontal framework embedded between two mountain ranges: the Serra do Mar and the Serra da Mantiqueira in the country's southeast. Fittingly titled Valley House, as inspired by its setting's dramatic natural topography, the project is one that resonates deeply with its creator, architect Beatriz Meyer. Through it, she had the opportunity to design a home for her own family and herself.

Tour a modern Brazilian house for an architect

The architect, who is the co-founder of Beatriz Meyer + Elisa Friedmann architects, says on the project's environment: ‘This breathtaking landscape, set within a productive farm, provided an ideal canvas for a bold project. Yet, the creative freedom also brought a sense of panic with the myriad of possibilities.’

The benefits of this idyllic, rural site included stepping away from the usual urban planning constraints, typical in city plots, leaving a complete blank slate for Meyer to work from. As she was her own client, and with an array of decisions to make, she did settle on one thing: the house had to be a model of sustainability.

‘The landscape was the true origin of the project,’ explains Meyers. ‘The house sits on a plateau within a valley, gently framed by two mountain ranges – a place defined by silence, distance, and horizon. From the beginning, I sought an architecture that would belong to the site rather than impose itself upon it – a house that would rest lightly on the land and dissolve into the surrounding vegetation.’

The site is orientated towards the north, which offers panoramic views towards the region's mountain ranges. So as not to obscure the skyline view or impact the environment, the residence was designed as a single-storey structure.

As a result, the project unfolds as a low, horizontal composition divided into three volumes that are defined by a single material - glass, stone and carbonised timber. ‘Together, these elements create a quiet balance between transparency and mass, permanence and lightness,’ says the architect.

The house was a prefabricated construction, as this building method would minimise impact on the land and therefore reflect Meyer’s sustainable architecture vision. However, the architect was also keen to incorporate stone, as it is a material deeply rooted in the particular landscape.

It was these two elements – the project's prefab nature in conjunction with the presence of stone and the irregularity it brought – that became the central challenge of the project, Meyers explains: ‘It required an unusual degree of anticipation, where every dimension and every connection had to be resolved long before construction began.’

The house is generously spaced, with flowing, open-plan living. However, it is the light and the way it moves through the Brazilian house's open passages that is the most striking. A shady pergola is placed above internal gardens, further playing with light and shadow, while circular and square apertures are strategically positioned to frame views of the sky above and the surrounding landscape.

‘To me, architecture is a quiet vessel for memory and emotion – a place where well-being can take root,’ says Meyers. ‘I hope visitors experience a sense of calm and gentle belonging. The spaces were conceived to flow naturally into one another, creating an atmosphere of harmony and stillness – a subtle and intimate form of comfort that resonates deeply within the soul.’

bemais.arq.br

This is the latest instalment of The Inside Story, Wallpaper’s series spotlighting intriguing, innovative and industry-leading interior design.

Where better to showcase Brazilian design than the home of design dealer, collector, curator and tireless champion of Brazilian creativity, Ulysses de Santi. Unsurprisingly, the São Paulo native’s residence is a veritable shrine to the country’s design culture. De Santi, who curated the Brazilian furniture exhibition Lightness & Tension at Christie’s in Los Angeles last September, has created an environment that reflects both deep connoisseurship and personal passion. Wallpaper* has the exclusive first look inside the recently redesigned property.

De Santi lives in a 1930s hillside residence in Los Angeles’ Doheny neighbourhood, and has reimagined his home through a lens informed by Brazilian modernism. The interiors are rich with texture and softness, most notably through the introduction of a series of arches that connect the rooms and soften the building’s original geometry. Limestone-washed walls lend the surfaces a velvety depth, their subtle tonal variations shifting with the light. Meanwhile, the original black-stained floors have been preserved, providing a striking graphic foundation.

Of course, de Santi lives among an unparalleled collection of Brazilian modern furniture, much of which is rarely seen outside museum settings. The great figures of Brazilian modernism are all represented: José Zanine Caldas, Lina Bo Bardi, Geraldo de Barros and Sérgio Rodrigues among them. At times, the home feels like a hybrid between museum, gallery and private shrine.

Yet de Santi’s approach is not about preserving Brazil’s design heritage behind glass. Instead, it is about celebrating it in everyday life. Despite their rarity (and significant market value), these pieces are not treated as untouchable objects but fully integrated into the rhythms of daily life. De Santi and his children interact with them daily, transforming the house into a ‘living archive’, as he describes it.

Visitors enter through a foyer with soaring ceilings and a diverse arrangement of artworks. At the end of the hallway sits a sideboard by Joaquim Tenreiro, one of the most significant Brazilian furniture designers represented in the collection.

A breakfast nook also features Tenreiro’s work, including a rare dining set with a free-form table and its original chairs. Nearby: a sculptural bar with stools by Jorge Zalszupin. The space is energised by bright paintings and framed by floor-to-ceiling windows that open onto the backyard, flooding the interior with light.

The adjoining dining room continues the dialogue between structure and softness. A Zalszupin table with black leather-wrapped bases and a rosewood top is paired with velvet-upholstered dining chairs designed by Geraldo de Barros. Large-scale artworks with contrasting textures introduce a dramatic tension.

A contemporary sofa upholstered in raw silk and golden velvet anchors the living area. It is surrounded by sculptural ‘Cubo’ armchairs and wooden coffee tables by Zalszupin – pieces that highlight the organic forms and natural materials characteristic of Brazilian design. Metal bookshelves display personal artefacts and artworks, blurring the boundary between the collectible and the personal.

The master bedroom continues de Santi’s curatorial approach, featuring a Tenreiro daybed and a rare chaise lounge rocker crafted from natural wood. Throughout the house, Brazilian design pieces are punctuated by international artworks and objects, adding a global dimension to the collection.

In de Santi’s home, he demonstrates conclusively that the warmth, richness and humanistic spirit of Brazilian design should not be confined behind glass or left to gather dust. In this setting, the pieces are not merely admired – they are wholly experienced.

Recreate the mood

In the 1970s, the Brazilian architect Eduardo Longo imagined a utopian urban community in which people would live in spherical silver pods suspended above the street in wire meshes. These capsule high-rises have yet to come to fruition, but Casa Bola, the radical prototype he built for himself and his family above his home/office in São Paulo, will be open to visitors for the first time from 7 March until 31 May 2026 as part of Aberto, an exhibition platform for contemporary art and design. Viewers’ journey around it will be enlightened by artworks made in response to the building and its inimitable creator.

Tour Eduardo Longo’s home at Aberto5

Longo, who is now 83, was drawn to the idea of spherical buildings while he was exploring the ideal unit that could be industrially produced. ‘The sphere is the lightest volume possible, and that fascinated me,’ he explains. ‘My dream was to create very light modular houses that could even be transported by air.’

The architect, a self-described urban hippy, was reacting to what he anticipated as a shift in urban life. ‘I believed spherical homes were the future because I felt that people would gradually live with fewer possessions and in a simpler way,’ he says. ‘Cities already offer many things without the need to own them personally, so I imagined a lifestyle that is lighter – both materially and architecturally.’

Longo built his prototype between 1974 and 1979 by hand using ferrocement, moulded over a mesh of recycled steel tubes, which also formed the continuous structure of the walls, built-in furniture, light fixtures and toilets. He moved in with his wife and two children, living there until a year or so ago, when he moved back down the stairs – or the spiral escape slide, perhaps.

Despite its compact form, Longo says the 8m-diameter structure in the Itaim Bibi district was well suited to everyday family life: ‘It was simply a home – comfortable, practical, and lived in like any other.’ Bedrooms and storage spaces were in the lower part of the sphere, with the entrance, kitchen and dining spaces in the middle, and the main living areas at the top, with large windows looking out across the city.

Casa Bola defied the transparency and structural rationalism that shaped much of Brazilian modernist architecture at the time. This rebellion was part of the draw for Aberto founder Filipe Assis, who has held previous editions of the exhibition in private homes by Oscar Niemeyer, Vilanova Artigas, Tomie Ohtake and Chu Ming Silveira. ‘We wanted to find an inventive piece of counter-culture, experimental architecture, and Casa Bola was exactly that,’ says São Paulo-born Assis, who recalls how, as a child, he would often ask his parents to drive past this curious marvel on the rooftop.

Most of the works by 50 Brazilian and international artists in the fifth edition of Aberto have been specially commissioned for the exhibition. ‘Everything Eduardo created had humour to it, even the brutalist villas he designed before Casa Bola,’ explains Assis, referring to one with a chimney that is shaped like a hand making a ‘call me’ gesture. ‘Some of the artists have responded to this.’

Luiz Zerbini, for example, has painted a canvas with trippy spherical motifs and psychedelic colours, calling the work A fantástica viagem de Eduardo Longo (‘The fantastic journey of Eduardo Longo’), while other paintings by Laís Amaral, Paloma Bosquê, and Tatiana Chalhoub riff on the building’s curves and angles. A mobile sculpture by Laura Lima nods to Longo’s frequent use of found materials. ‘He was the king of improvisation,’ says Assis.

Some of the architect’s own unusual assemblages will be spread around the white interiors of Casa Bola, such as a lamp incorporating retro 3D glasses and a plant pot sprouting a ‘flower’ made from a glove, making a thumbs-up sign. ‘He didn’t intentionally make them as sculptures, but that’s what they are,’ says the Aberto founder. Aberto has also collaborated with Etel to reissue the metal chairs that Longo designed for the house, with balls for feet to stop them scratching the floor.

While visitors can explore the spherical house, most of the furniture and artworks, from galleries including Mendes Wood DM, Luisa Strina and Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, will be displayed in the gallery space in one of the Longo-designed buildings beneath. Some of his sketches, models and works – curated by Fernando Serapião – will give further insight into his mind. ‘Eduardo Longo is a rare architect who pushed his vision to the extreme, much like a visual artist, transcending the conventional boundaries of architecture,’ says Serapião.

In Longo’s imagination, the spherical modules would be used for both high-rise and long-rise buildings. ‘I was fascinated by the idea that when spherical modules are placed together, they naturally maintain separation between units. This allows air, light, and vision to pass through,’ he says.

While society may not have been ready for this reinvention of city life in the 1970s and 1980s, visitors to Aberto5 can glimpse what they’ve been missing – or what may still be to come.

Aberto5 is on show at Casa Bola, 7 March – 31 May 2026, in São Paulo, Brazil, aberto.art

A São Paulo apartment was designed to engage with its urban context, but at the same time, feel like it's 'suspended above the city'. The family home, a duplex titled ELB Apartment, centrally located within the Brazilian metropolis, occupies the top levels of an apartment building and had its interior throughout – and its top level especially – thoroughly redesigned by local Jacobsen Studio.

Explore an expansive São Paulo apartment by Jacobsen Studio

The architects worked on the two-level interior, drawing on functional arrangement – placing social areas and bedrooms on the first floor, in a more conventional single-family home layout, and bonus spaces for entertainment on the second. The home's exterior was kept unaltered to ensure the building's exterior continuity remains. Any changes concerning windows and shading were tackled internally, though the addition of bespoke shutters and curtains.

The communal areas are generous and open-plan, wrapped in warm timber cladding that envelops the interior across walls and ceilings. Jacobsen Studio's modernist architecture brand heritage (an approach also witnessed in past work, such as this low-slung residential complex) helped inform the design direction and interiors, which led to a space filled with warm and neutral colour tones and lush, soft fabrics. The main family bedrooms are also hosted on this floor.

The fully reimagined upper level contains a family room, a game room, a children's playroom, and a wine cellar. Importantly, the duplex São Paulo apartment's top area sprawls out to an expansive terrace which opens to long views of the city skyline and creates the impression of hovering just above its buildings.

The outdoors area is connected seamlessly to the interior through operable floor-to-ceiling glazing. This is framed by a prefabricated laminated wood roof and pillars, which serve as brise-soleils and light filters.

This makes the home's upper section illuminate from within like a lantern at night, marking its presence in the city – albeit a landmark softened by carefully planted greenery on the roof garden.

This presence of nature is enhanced through the material selection throughout – the palette includes the aforementioned wood, but also stone floors, a blend that feels both contemporary and timeless.

The annual Wallpaper* Design Awards issue features an honour roll of outstanding places, products and people; celebrating the power of design to lift spirits and improve lives. The City of the Year award spotlights the urban locations, making an impact in design, architecture and contemporary culture.

Discover the nominated locations below, and stay tuned for the winner, which will be announced in the next issue of Wallpaper* magazine on 8 January 2026.

Wallpaper* Design Awards 2026: City of the Year shortlist

Accra, Ghana

Ghana’s capital is entering a defining chapter, its creative momentum gathering pace after years of long-stated ambition. This year (2025), the team behind Limbo Accra established a new intellectual anchor for the city with Limbo Museum in Labone: a 600 sq m, two-storey transformation of an unfinished structure into a cultural hub, research lab and exhibition space where architecture and art converge. Across town, the opening of Dot.ateliers | Ogbojo by DeRoche Projects and TAELON7, serves as HQ for a writers’ and curators’ residency dedicated to rest, reflection and cross-continental exchange on Accra’s outskirts. Meanwhile, Lesley Lokko’s African Futures Institute (AFI) continues to evolve and push the trajectory further. And yet, as Ghanaian architect Alice Asafu-Adjaye reminds us in her Wallpaper* local’s guide to Accra, the engine of this rising power city remains its people: ‘You hear us before you see us,’ she says, whether in music, debate or conversation – a vibrancy that continues to propel Accra’s evolution.

New architecture: Backyard Community Club, by DeRoche Projects; Dot.ateliers | Ogbojo, by DeRoche Projects and TAELON7; Limbo Museum, by Limbo Accra.

Hotels and restaurants: Ghana Club; Kempinski Hotel Gold Coast City, by Page and Looney and Associates; La Villa Boutique Hotel; Santoku, by Hubert de Givenchy.

Cultural draws: Dikan Center, founded by photographer Paul Ninson; National Theatre, by CCTN Design; Nubuke Foundation, by Nav_s Baerbel Mueller and TAELON7.

Busan, South Korea

Newly named World Design Capital 2028, Busan is gaining momentum, using design to build on its traditions of civic resilience and cooperation. Under the banner Inclusive City, Engaged Design, the bid reflects a place intent on shaping more connected futures and deepening its cultural landscape, from the vast Eco Delta Smart City plan, a zero-energy, water-smart district built on digital urban systems, to a surge of architectural ambition now reshaping the skyline. Under construction, Kengo Kuma’s Busan Lotte Town Tower rises over the waterfront, Snøhetta’s long-awaited Busan Opera House edges toward reality, and OMA is reimagining hillside living through its Slope Housing model. Seoul may have taken our Best City award in 2024, but Busan, with its blend of ambition and intention, may well be next in line.

New architecture: Cheongsapo Daritdol Observatory; Heungkuk Tower Busan, by Mecanoo; Millac The Market / LJL Architects and 2K1 Architecture.

Under construction: Busan Lotte Town Tower, by Kengo Kuma and Associates; Busan Opera House, by Snøhetta with Ilshin Architects; Busan Slope Housing, by OMA.

Hotels and restaurants: EL 16.52, by JOHO Architecture; Mogua Hotel; Sakae, by Studio Gaia.

Cultural draws: Busan Cinema Centre, by Coop Himmelb(l)au; SCRAB, by JeongChoi Works; Space Lee Ufan, by KAGA Architects & Planners.

Delhi, India

Delhi’s creative momentum is set to accelerate in 2026 with the launch of the Delhi Design District this spring. Born from the collaboration between Wallpaper* and StoneX, the cultural hub, whose facade is inspired by the Rosetta Stone, will be home to multisensory art experiences, installations shaped by various Indian dance forms, and seven galleries that reflect human emotions. Its arrival will co-exist neatly with the annual India Art Fair, hosted every February. Meanwhile, the city’s gallery landscape continues to evolve, led by long-standing heavyweights like Nature Morte alongside a widening constellation of experimental spaces. As Delhi continues to see urbanisation and population growth, its current redevelopment of the New Delhi Railway Station will enhance civilian connections to buses, metro and airport alongside nearby areas.

New architecture: Pendentive House, by AKDA; Yashobhoomi Convention & Exhibition Centre, by IDOM + CP Kukreja Architects.

Under construction: Central Vista Redevelopment; Delhi Design District building; New Delhi Railway Station redevelopment.

Hotels and restaurants: Call Me Ten, by Renesa Architecture Design Interiors; The Lodhi, by Kerry Hill; Zura Restaurant and Bar, by Studiio Dangg.

Cultural draws: Nature Morte; Pradhanmantri Sangrahalaya, by Sikka Associates Architects; Shri Ram Centre for Performing Arts, by Shiv Nath Prasa.

Detroit, USA

Detroit is booming – again. Michigan Central, once a symbol of the city’s collapse, now anchors a high-energy mobility campus and sets the tone for a skyline shifting in real time. Downtown, Bedrock’s Hudson’s Detroit, designed by SHoP Architects, rises like a new marker of ambition, while the revived Book Tower blends contemporary living and culture into its restored historic shell. Neighbourhoods are keeping pace: Little Village is accelerating thanks to the Curis-led arts centre Shepherd and a flurry of creative openings, while Core City’s experimental housing and live-work compounds have turned it into a compelling urban laboratory. The numbers reinforce the sentiment: the city gained 12,500 new residents last year, and since 2011, Design Core Detroit has organised Detroit Month of Design, a yearly, city-wide festival that spotlights local creatives and projects.

New architecture: Bedrock’s Hudson’s Detroit, by SHoP Architects; Lantern complex and PASC building, by OMA.

Under construction: Stanton Yards, by SO-IL and OSD; NoMad Detroit.

Hotels and restaurants: Barda restaurant, by Undecorated; Shinola Hotel, by Gachot Studios; The Siren Hotel, by ASH NYC.

Cultural draws: Downtown Detroit and Library Street Collective, founded by Anthony and JJ Curis; Shepherd art Centre, by Peterson Rich Office.

Helsinki, Finland

As Helsinki Design Week 2025 marked its 20th anniversary, the city leaned into a question it knows well: why does the world’s happiest country stay so content? The Scandinavian nation has been designated the happiest in the world for the last eight years by the annual WEF report. The answer is arguably written across the city itself: modern yet rooted, social yet quietly reflective. Its design heritage and forward-looking attitude form a kind of civic formula, visible everywhere from a new wave of design-led hotels to its constellation of spas, singular restaurants and cultural institutions. Helsinki tends its past while engineering its future: the refreshed Finlandia Hall reasserts Aalto’s legacy, while the forthcoming Museum of Architecture and Design will unite more than 900,000 artefacts under one roof. It’s a city refining its identity with calm assurance.

New architecture: Finlandia Hall, refreshed by Arkkitehdit NRT; Lagmansgården, by Anttinen Oiva Architects.

Under construction: Museum of Architecture and Design, by JKMM.

Hotels and restaurants: Finlandia Hall Bistro, by Fyra; Finlandia Homes, featuring Alvar Aalto’s original designs; Jackie, by Joanna Laajisto; Solo Sokos Pier 4, by Anttinen Oiva Architects.

Cultural draws: House of Culture Vallikallio, by Alvar Aalto; Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, by Steven Holl; Oodi, by ALA Architects.

São Paulo, Brazil

Long considered one of Wallpaper*’s original design destinations, hard-working São Paulo is not a city that rests on its laurels. While residential projects remain a defining lure (from Studio Arthur Casas’ Pacaembu House, which won a Wallpaper* Design Award in 2024, to the confident work of established studios), large-scale regeneration is gathering pace; Planta Inc’s revival of the city’s modernist heritage signals a renewed respect for its icons, while Sol Camacho’s transformation of Pacaembu Stadium casts tropical modernism in a refreshed light. Hospitality is keeping pace, with Rosewood, Soho House and W drawing travellers hungry for the city’s creative energy. And this year’s 14th International Architecture Biennale pushed the conversation further, challenging architecture to confront climate change and the extreme events reshaping our urban future.

New architecture: Ibaté Building, by Studio Arthur Casas; Roca São Paulo Gallery, by Fernanda Marques; Pina Contemporânea Museum, by Arquitetos Associados.

Under construction: Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP), by Metro Arquitetos.

Hotels and restaurants: Pulso Hotel Faria Lima, by Arthur Casas; Rosewood São Paulo, by Philippe Starck; Santokki Restaurant, by Tadu Arquitetura,

Cultural draws: Edifício Itália, by Franz Heep; Ibirapuera Auditorium, by Oscar Niemeyer; Porto Seguro Cultural Space, by São Paulo Arquitetura.

Explore the shortlist for Life-Enhancer of the Year and Launch of the Year in the Wallpaper* Design Awards 2026.

Casa Muxarabi is cinematic in scope and scale. The Brazilian house in Minas Gerais, the newest project from mf+arquitetos, is arranged as a linear pavilion, spliced with a long central courtyard, with screened walls that extend out into the landscape. A square pool is located adjacent to the house, amid an expanse of lawn, with a separate studio structure standing alone in the large garden.

The name ‘Muxarabi’ references the traditional lattice screens that are found throughout the house, inside and out, helping filter light through the spaces. The warmth of the earth is referenced in the use of red hardwoods and rammed earth, with the roof appearing minimal and lightweight in comparison to the solidity of the walls.

‘From afar, its silhouette appears as a precise line traced between the deep blue above and the warm texture of the earth below,’ the architects explain. ‘Nothing in this house is abrupt: everything unfolds with the serenity of something that deeply understands the land on which it rests.’

The entrance sequence brings one into the house from beneath a long canopy roof that also covers the carport. The main body of the house is set behind an inner courtyard, which in turn is located behind a long wall that bisects the structure, extending out into the landscape on either side.

The interior is effectively concealed and revealed in stages, with the red rammed earth exterior wall giving way to lattice screens once one is through the planted courtyard.

A large pivoting door opens to reveal a concrete-lined sanctum, which directs the visitor into the main living space. With sliding walls and curtains on both sides, this showcase room can be opened up to the elements or sequestered away within the structure. The space is free from structure and looks out over the lawn towards the pool.

Here you’ll discover the shimmering effect of the lattice screens, which respond to low sun by casting deep shadows across the walls and floors. Furniture choices were carefully considered, including elegant midcentury pieces and tactile sofas in neutral colours that don’t distract from the landscape.

In addition to the pool and separate studio, the principal bedrooms are contained within a rectangular wing that sits alongside the primary structure. Folding walls consisting of lattice screens provide the privacy, creating atmospheric retreats at dawn and sunset.

In the architects’ own words, ‘through cast shadows, permeable panels, and breathing walls, Casa Muxarabi reveals itself as a silent manifesto of contemporary Brazilian architecture’.

Mfmaisarquitetos.com

Kéré Architecture has revealed the design of its first project to be built in South America. Situated in the heart of Rio de Janeiro, in the Cidade Nova neighbourhood, Biblioteca dos Saberes (The House of Wisdom) is a library inspired by the region's context.

The 40.000 sqm public library, the firm's second literary project after the Gando Primary School Library, is inspired by Rio's native trees, and is set to act as a vibrant cultural hub which reflects the city’s rich historical heritage. The project was commissioned by the Rio de Janeiro City Hall and presented to members of the local community on 20 November 2025, the National Day of Zumbi and Black Consciousness in Brazil.

A first look inside Francis Kéré's Biblioteca dos Saberes design

The Berlin-based firm, which was founded by Francis Kéré in 2005, has always had a focus on architecture fuelled by social commitment. Biblioteca dos Saberes is an embodiment of this, encompassing design and knowledge sharing. A core focus of the building’s design is ‘the tree of knowledge’, which comprises a vertical cylinder inspired by trees native to the Tijuca Forest.

Complementing these references to Brazil's natural landscape, Kéré also nods to his hometown of Gando in Burkina Faso, where trees act as gathering places. The building is rooted in creating pockets of shared spaces across its three stories, from its reading rooms and exhibition spaces, to an auditorium and a café.

The building’s façade is perforated, creating shade from the sun, as well as cooling ventilation. There are open-air areas, courtyards, a canopied amphitheatre, a café, and a rooftop garden. A pedestrian bridge will connect the library to a monument to the anti-slavery resistance leader Zumbi dos Palmares.

The library is nestled within a site of layered cultural history. It replaces the former Praça Onze (Brazil’s first samba school ), and is adjacent to Oscar Niemeyer’s Sambódromo. The project is designed to act as a meeting point for different communities and reflects upon Kéré’s experience of building in Africa. An aim is to reimagine the Atlantic ‘not as a divide but as a river of shared heritage linking Brazil and Africa, shaping a library and cultural hub designed to inspire and serve generations to come.’

Says Kéré: ‘The Biblioteca dos Saberes is a celebration of the beautiful city of Rio de Janeiro. I love its rhythm, its voices, its spirit flowing through the streets and along the waves of the Atlantic. This library grows from the city’s history and wisdom, from samba that moves the body to the poetry that moves the heart. It is a home for knowledge that belongs to everyone, a place where past and future meet beneath one roof, open to the city and to the sea that carries its stories to the world.’

kerearchitecture.com

This Brasília apartment, a duplex unit designed by CoDa Arquitetura, is perched inside one of the Brazilian capital's modernist superblocks. Titled Moiré, the home has just been renovated, bringing contemporary drama to the existing structure, while enhancing its original bones and architectural details.

‘Moiré’ – referring to a kind of shimmering or rippling visual effect produced by the superposition of two similar patterns – is a technique that has been used in art and design for centuries. In this project, visitors might notice a similar effect produced by the criss-cross of metal mesh in the central stair's railing, which led to the apartment’s name.

Tour Moiré, a Brasília apartment with drama at its heart

The 294 sq m urban apartment was designed to be the main residence in town for a doctor and a lawyer, and their small dog. ‘We sought to enhance the existing space while meeting the specific demands of the clients, who wanted a guest kitchen integrated into the living room, but also a more private kitchen for everyday use,’ explain the architects. ‘Furthermore, the request for three suites, a guest bathroom, a TV room, and an office evidences the concern for creating a functional and integrated space.’

The apartment was designed to accommodate the client's brief, while also leaving the concrete beams and pillars exposed, to infuse a sense of rawness and material honesty into the space. The predominant style is modern and contemporary, with the main staircase (an existing feature, but now with its new metal railing and handrail) at the apartment’s core.

The honeycomb ceiling is a subtle yet intriguing design element. The greys of its metal grid and the surrounding concrete contrast with the warm, darker tones of the staircase and wood. ‘The apartment was based on the desire to create integrated and functional spaces, reflecting the client's needs and preferences. The search for harmony between practicality and sophisticated design was the guiding principle for the firm in conceiving the project,’ say the architects.

Two kitchens were carefully designed to fit their respective purposes: one is more formal, integrated with the living room for entertaining, while the other is fit for daily use. Some spatial swaps were needed as part of the renovation, including moving a powder room. Say the architects: ‘One bathroom was converted into two, and a new powder room was created, which [allowed us to] expand the living room.’

The design's material palette spans from the feature wood panelling in the entertaining area to the dynamic honeycomb ceiling, the sleek metal staircase and the Guatemala marble kitchen countertop.

Each bathroom has a distinct personality – there’s the primary suite, a green suite, and a blue suite. The second-floor balconies connect the main bedroom to an office and a secondary bedroom. The result throughout is a timeless, understated residence that balances bespoke, contemporary living while offering a warm environment for both entertaining and relaxation.

coda.com.br

Perched high in Cunha's Serra do Mar mountains, in a rural area of upstate São Paulo, this contemporary residence is designed to take in wide, unobstructed views from every direction. The project was created by Roberto Brotero Arquitetura, a Brazilian architecture firm keen to craft a house that provided a journey for its visitors, with each internal area framing the landscape.

Tour this contemporary house in Cunha

‘The main inspiration for this project came from the site itself – a small plateau at 1,300m above sea level, set within a rugged mountain region with privileged views in every direction,’ says Roberto Brotero, founder of the practice.

‘The idea was for the house to become part of the mountain without disappearing into it, and for the windows to frame the landscape in different ways from each room, so that the view would never feel flat or uniform inside the house.’

The residence wasn't designed to mimic its mountainous context. Instead, it emerged from a desire to add to the continuous horizon. As a result, the home creates a dialogue between architecture and view.

Brotero studied old Brazilian farmhouses during the design development; however, he was keen to avoid romanticism. The design is distinctly contemporary – from its white volumes to its stone flooring and plastered masonry. Yet the integration of timber and traditional elements, such as a large fireplace and a red wood-burning stove, add a hint of nostalgia and warmth to the whole. The architects have created a harmonious balance between cosy rustic charm and the clean lines of a modern, airy space.

The living space's corner glass windows, which extend the rich landscape and invite it inside the house, are Brotero’s favourite design element. Slotting neatly into the structure's block volumes of varying sizes and heights, the glass dissolves the boundary between indoors and outdoors.

Inside, the Cunha house is awash with natural light and gentle ventilation. Each part of the home is designed to offer different views of the mountain or closer contact with the surrounding vegetation. The design assertively inhabits the landscape, but does not compete with it.

Brotero says: ‘The intention is that the architecture gradually reveals the surrounding mountain views, framing the landscape differently through each space.’

robertobrotero.com

One morning in 1987, the architect Lina Bo Bardi met a colleague at her home in the suburbs of São Paulo with a shoebox and a message: ‘Give this to Lelé [the nickname of architect João Filgueiras Lima, famous for his innovations in prefabrication] and tell him I’m thinking of a structure like this,’ she said. ‘He’ll understand.’ Bo Bardi had spent the previous two years on a revitalisation plan for Pelourinho, the historic centre of Salvador da Bahia, Brazil’s former capital, and she needed a cheap, flexible material for her planned interventions. Inside the box, Lelé found a tightly pleated leaf of palm grass. As predicted, he knew what to do.

Roughly two years later, Bo Bardi and Lelé completed their collaboration on the Ladeira da Misericórdia, a steep, cobbled street connecting Pelourinho to the commercial district below. They used Lelé’s accordion-folded ferrocement panels to reinforce crumbling colonial buildings for social housing and small businesses, and to turn a half-ruined structure into a rooftop café. Around the base of a pre-existing mango tree, they built a pair of circular volumes that would serve as a democratic gathering place for a city divided by topography, race and class: a restaurant called Coaty.

That, at least, was the idea. Bo Bardi, who had migrated to Brazil from her native Italy after the Second World War, first fell in love with Salvador’s singular culture, shaped by its Afro-diasporic majority, in the late 1950s. After a US-backed military coup in 1964 drove her socially-oriented practice into recession, Bo Bardi retreated to São Paulo. She returned to Salvador two decades later when the city government invited her to help revive Pelourinho, which had recently been declared a Unesco World Heritage site. Her ambitious plans centred on what researcher Weslley Pontes calls ‘spaces of encounter’ — theatres, cinemas and public infrastructure that would serve the neighbourhood’s mostly poor population. Coaty in particular, Pontes says, ‘was always an experimental space’.

Behind the new home for Pivô in Brazil's Salvador da Bahia

Around the time of Coaty’s completion in 1989, the municipal government changed, discarding Bo Bardi’s communitarian plans and launching a brutal displacement campaign to sanitise Pelourinho for tourism. She died three years later, in 1992, aged 77.

From the mid-1990s onward, Coaty was intermittently abandoned and occupied, stripped for parts and sealed with cement block. Then, in 2024, the non-profit arts institution Pivô approached Salvador’s Secretary of Culture and Tourism to inquire after Bo Bardi’s lost masterpiece. Five months later, it was announced that Pivô, with its strong global fundraising base, would manage the building’s ‘reactivation’, with a mandate, says Lua Leça Escobar, an adviser in the Secretary’s office, to ‘connect artists and researchers from Salvador to the world’.

Pivô opened its research and residency programme in 2012 in a sprawling three-storey space in the Copan, an Oscar Niemeyer-designed apartment block in São Paulo that had seen better days. Over the next decade, Pivô developed free programming with artists and scholars from across Brazil and the world – particularly, says Fernanda Brenner, Pivô’s founder and artistic director, from Bahia. When Carolina de Sá, Pivô’s institutional director, showed Brenner her grandmother’s half-empty house in Salvador – a space that, in the 1960s, had been an informal salon for cultural luminaries including Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil – they decided to expand. To date, Pivô Salvador has hosted 28 residents, more than a third from Brazil’s politically and economically marginalised Northeast.

‘We’ve proven twice that we have the strength and the stamina to take over ruins,’ Brenner says. The Coaty announcement met with blowback from members of Salvador’s arts community, who saw the concession as part of a troubling pattern. In Bahia, ‘people come, they see, they take, and they don’t give back,’ says Lanussi Pasquali, co-creator, along with her late husband Joãozito Pereira, of the artist-led initiative Projeto Ativa. ‘And when something important comes along, the project always goes to someone from outside.’ In 2016, Pasquali and Pereira occupied Coaty for eight months on minuscule government grants, hosting events such as art installations, poetry readings and concerts. ‘It was a seed planted to say “we exist, this place exists, and it needs to be public”,’ she says. ‘We didn’t depend on people from outside to tell us how to run it.’

Brenner, de Sá and their team understand these frustrations and know the only means of defusing them will be the programming itself. ‘We understand the responsibility,’ says de Sá, who grew up in Salvador. ‘We have to make sure that everyone feels welcome, that everything is done for the city.’

As Pivô collaborates on structural plans with academics and surviving colleagues of the architects, its programme manager, Ramon Martins, has started compiling an extensive archive on the Ladeira’s history. Eventually, the spaces conceived for social housing will host residencies, educational programmes, a seed bank and free studios for local artists, while the never-realised café will become a restaurant where paying clients will subsidise meals for art workers. Pivô will also relocate the bulk of its residencies and public programming to Salvador, generating jobs and training for the local culture industry.

How much of this comes to pass will depend on political will and continuity. ‘Lina left the city twice because of a change in the political system,’ says Martins, and while the municipal government will remain in place until 2029, Brazil remains polarised and unpredictable. Meanwhile, the gentrification of Pelourinho has raised the stakes for this narrow slice of a crowded, unequal city, where ‘culture is the only space for people to breathe,’ says Pasquali.

Bo Bardi was a European emigré and a wealthy Paulistana: in Salvador, an outsider twice over. Yet Brenner and de Sá, Pasquali and Pontes all invoke her as inspiration for the Ladeira’s future, which, they agree, must centre on restoring Coaty to public use. For the moment, Martins says, ‘We can dream. That’s why we’re trying to do everything now.’

pivo.org.br

A new Brazilian home is located on a corner plot in the suburbs of Itupeva in São Paulo state; welcome to Serena House, an L-shaped, two-storey residence that unfolds organically into the landscape. Designed by Brazilian architecture office Padovani, the home was conceived as a summer countryside escape – a refuge away from the big city.

Inside Serena House, a contemporary Brazilian home

The clients, a middle-aged couple with teenage children, wanted a base to host and entertain family and friends. The residence comprises two volumes in an L-shaped layout, its formation nodding to the openness and clear forms of contemporary Brazilian architecture.

The architects wanted to make the residence more than a roof over the clients' heads, telling Wallpaper*: ‘It is more than that. It's a living organism where the interaction between space, light, and nature creates memorable settings for intense family life.’

Padovani decided on the use of natural materials and surfaces that invite the touch, such as exposed concrete, stone and wood. These timeless tones and lighter elements create a warm and welcoming atmosphere.

This is also seen in the long metal eaves, which were clad in wood, resulting in a playful interaction between shadow and light. This further accentuates the low volumes and sleek, horizontal lines of the building.

The main entrance is discreet, tucked away behind the green tropical vegetation. Through the pathway via the gardens, the home opens up. Venturing inside, the residence is large and airy, consisting of a living room, dining room, home theatre, four-car garage, wine cellar, pantry, laundry area, gourmet area, sauna, six master suites, two staff bedrooms, and ten bathrooms (including the suites).

On one side of the home are the living areas, which sit perpendicular to the main entrance and dining room. On the upper floor, the primary suite extends onto a large open balcony that laps up the surrounding vista. This Brazilian home's calming views allow a moment to pause, which is sometimes hard to find in the rush of city living.

padovaniarquitetos.com

In Bahia, Brazil, Itapororoca House by Bloco Arquitetos is nestled in the cascading treeline, looking down towards its namesake beach below. The project draws elements from Brazilian colonial houses, which typically boast large verandas that wrap around the building, providing shade and moments of calm and reflection.

Tour Itapororoca Casa by Bloco Arquitetos

The inspiration behind the house was centred on creating a respectful integration between the built space and the natural environment. ‘We made the decision to use a Glued Laminated Timber (GLT) structure, with small spans and transparency, allowing us to create a light, precise structure that connects seamlessly with the surrounding tropical landscape,’ explains Daniel Mangabeira, co-founder and one of the lead architects at Bloco Arquitetos.

It is this direct relationship between the building and open space, as well as the references to the verandas seen on colonial homes, which helped guide the design, as Mangabeira says: ‘Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, a Brazilian author, discusses the colonial house as part of the country’s cultural formation. The veranda emerges as an intermediate space of sociability, a point of mediation between public and private. For him, the veranda is an expression of a life turned outward and toward others.’

In Itapororoca House, the veranda serves as a transitional space between interior and exterior, emphasised through large porches and generous roof space. The linear repetition of the pillar structures around the building adds visual intrigue. ‘This spatial logic is also present in modern architecture in Brasília, where our studio is based, especially in the palaces designed by Oscar Niemeyer, such as the Palácio do Planalto and the Palácio da Alvorada,’ says Mangabeira.

The architecture studio’s project is an accumulation of different sources of inspiration drawn from Brazil's rich architectural history, including the modernist architecture from Brasília. Past solutions have, here, been adapted to the topography and climatic conditions of the Bahian coast.

‘The main challenge was reconciling a large-scale wooden structure with the technical complexity of the site, especially considering the mandatory 15m setback from the bluff and the proximity to the sea,’ say Henrique Coutinho and Matheus Seco, also co-founders at the studio. ‘It was a balancing act between engineering and architecture, respecting the material’s limits while enhancing its expressiveness in an extremely sensitive area of the Brazilian coastline, protected by IPHAN – the National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage.’

The residence is located on a 3m slope and 30m from a steep cliff. Taking advantage of the plot, the project consists of a semi-underground structure that helps integrate it into the natural terrain. The result means the building takes advantage of an optical illusion; from the entrance level, it looks like a single-storey home, while from the beachside, it unveils its two levels.

The living areas and bedrooms face the east. However, the most intriguing part of the building is the mezzanine with its colourful panels designed by the architecture studio. It filters in light and the colour, adding movement to the interior.

The architect’s vision for the home was to create a sense of continuity between the natural and built environments, as the co-founders tell Wallpaper*: ‘The goal for the space is not to impose itself, but to reveal itself little by little, as an extension of the landscape, especially at the back of the house, which opens up to the Atlantic Ocean.’

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Brazilian design is having a global moment. From Christie’s Los Angeles exhibition Lightness & Tension – pairing midcentury master Joaquim Tenreiro with contemporary designer Lucas Simões – to Then and Now: Brazilian Legacy at MAC Niterói in Rio de Janeiro and the Brazilian Furniture Project’s showcase at Salone del Mobile, the country’s creative output is increasingly in the spotlight.

Now, its energy arrives in London. Opening during Frieze Art Fair, JIG Studio launches a permanent two-storey space on Lexington Street, Soho – part gallery, part concept store, and part cultural platform for Brazil's most innovative talent

Founded by London-based architect Richard Penman, whose clients include Issey Miyake and Stella McCartney, and Grace Nemeth, a Brazilian-born design strategist and entrepreneur, JIG Studio debuts with over 35 works spanning textiles, wood, ceramics and mixed media – most of which have never been shown in Europe.

‘Brazil is a hotbed of design talent – incredibly underrepresented in the UK and Europe,’ says Nemeth. ‘We set up JIG Studio to provide a platform for this talent. By introducing the designers and their work, we aim to celebrate the emotional power of Brazilian design through objects that hold memory, meaning and cultural depth.’

The inaugural collection highlights Brazil's rich heritage and evolving aesthetic through the work of seven leading and emerging designers. Textile artist and visual storyteller Alex Rocca combines copper, brass, beads, wood, stone, wire and glass fusion techniques to explore themes of ancestry, culture and Afro-Brazilian religion. Humberto da Marta creates pieces from paper, pulp and ceramics, drawing on manual construction methods and collaborations with local artisans.

Atelier Gustavo Bittencourt investigates materiality through traditional woodworking fused with contemporary forms, while rising talent Bonni (Erik Bonissato) crafts sculptural pieces like the Esfera Lamp and Sphere Sideboard, blending technical precision with artistic elegance.

The collective also features Origin, a design brand that fuses high-tech production with artisanal techniques in wood to hand-craft furniture that embodies Brazilian culture. São Paulo-based studio Ovo presents designs such as the Luminária Vela and Stool Rio. Finally, Ronald Sasson, an artist and designer known for his minimalist, expressive furniture, brings a fine art sensibility to design. The gallery's collections will be refreshed seasonally, offering curated edits and exhibitions.

As Brazilian creativity continues to command global attention, JIG Studio offers London a vivid new lens through which to view the country’s bold, emotionally resonant design culture.

The JIG Studio showroom is located at 25 Lexington Street, Soho, London

The British Embassy in Brazil cuts a distinctly postmodernist figure within its world-renowned modernist architecture context. The building is set in the country's capital of Brasilia, the city famously created from scratch by a team of creatives, including architect Oscar Niemeyer and urban planner Lucio Costa, and inaugurated in 1960. Within this precious historical setting, the embassy structure has now been given a 21st-century breath of life through a recent renovation by studio Hersen Mendes Arquitetura.

Take a tour of the British embassy in Brazil

The project's story began in 2023, when the practice was invited to refresh the space in order to receive the new British ambassador Stephanie Al-Qaq - the first woman to hold the position in the country. It coincided with the celebrations of the coronation of King Charles III and Queen Consort Camilla in that same year.

The architects worked hard at updating all the rooms, creating a crisp yet warm atmosphere to serve the ambassador's needs and the building's wider functions. The original architecture's spirit was retained, as the team consulted original planning documents in order to ensure they honoured the existing design, which is defined by asymmetries and a mix of right and 45-degree angles.

'When we decided to rethink the official residence, we had in mind a space that would represent this fusion of worlds. We wanted something bold, modern, but rooted in Brazilian aesthetics - especially those of Brasília - paying homage to local and national artists,' says ambassador Stephanie Al-Qaq.

Balancing the demands of daily life in a private family home with official meetings and formal events, the interiors have been composed as a mix of design-led and vintage furniture, and a wealth of art, which adorns walls and dots the interior.

Featured art pieces include a panel of hand-painted tiles by Alexandre Mancini, who was a disciple of Athos Bulcão. Its geometric shapes have been inspired by the Brazilian flag, but the colours nod to that of the United Kingdom. Meanwhile, in the living room, a green marble panel hints at British naval tradition, and in the banquet hall, a mural by Sandra Crivelaro brings Brazilian flora to the spotlight.

The furniture chosen to populate the different areas plays a similar role - ensuring comfort while elegantly blending Brazilian and British references. There are Windsor chairs by Jader Almeida, and Lina armchairs, inspired by architect Lina Bo Bardi. Works by designers Domingos Tótora, Jacqueline Terpins, and Zanini de Zanine, also feature throughout, highlighting contemporary Brazilian design.

A handmade Kamaiurá hammock is placed in the terrace of the room reserved for the use of King Charles during a possible future visit. Made of buriti and cotton fibres, it nods to Brazil's wealth of local crafts.

'I believe that the result reflects this proposal very well: a blend of modern British style and the bold lightness of Brazilian architecture. It is a space that dialogues with Brazilian and British modernity, celebrating innovation and diversity,' adds the ambassador.

hersenmendes.com

A private house in Valinhos, a municipality in the state of São Paulo, makes the most of a sloping site and far-reaching views thanks to designs by Fernanda Padula and Juliana Risso Arquitetura. At 640 square metres, the Casa Cedro has a long, linear plan that steps down the hillside, starting with a sunken entrance courtyard reached from a glazed hallway.

This entrance level also houses the bedrooms and home office, with the three primary suites orientated south across the garden to the lake view beyond. Guest accommodation is located adjacent to the hallway. On descending the cantilevered entrance staircase, one arrives in the main living area, a large open-plan space with a glazed sliding wall that opens up a covered outdoor space adjoining the pool.

The views are orientated towards the horizon, with service areas and staff quarters also located on this floor. The broad patio and pool run the width of the house, alongside a staircase that descends the sloping garden. Another external staircase runs alongside the house, hugging the edge of the plot.

Beneath the pool there’s a changing area, sauna and gym overlooking the garden, making the most of the steep gradient. This arrangement, which raises the pool up above the landscape as it drops away puts the water on the same level as the tree tops, inviting reflections and ‘amplifying the sense of suspension that defines the house,’ according to the architects.

The house is made from structural concrete, with shuttering patterns left exposed and contrasting with the delicate hardwood timber screens and slats that create privacy and transformation for the exterior façades in addition to adding warmth to the interiors. ‘Casa Cedro is more than a residence,’ say the architects, ‘it is an immersion into the landscape and a poetic dialogue between architecture, nature and materiality.’

Fernanda Padula & Juliana Risso, FernandaPadula.com, @fefepadula, @julianarissoarq

You may not be instantly familiar with the name Carmen Portinho, yet her work stands out. Perched imperiously on the hill that gives it its name, the Pedregulho housing complex rises like a modernist temple. Its sumptuous, sinuous form cuts a dynamic figure against the otherwise endless urban sprawl of Rio de Janeiro's São Cristóvão neighbourhood.

Pedregulho’s undulating 260-meter-long main block curves elegantly along the contours of the landscape, creating a highlight of socially conscious architecture in Brazil, or the tropical modernist architecture equivalent of the Acropolis. Unprecedented for a social housing block, architect Affonso Reidy’s ambitious masterpiece is unlikely to be repeated.

Yet beyond the innovative design that is characteristic of Reidy’s work, it embodies something else: the revolutionary vision of engineer and urban planner Portinho, his partner until he passed in 1964. While Reidy received the plaudits for Pedregulho, it was his formidable partner who transformed Brazilian modernism from behind the scenes, challenging every assumption about how society could be shaped through its architecture.

Carmen Portinho and Affonso Reidy: a partnership that shaped Brazilian modernism

Portinho’s relationship with Reidy, from the 1940s to his passing in 1964, proved transformative for Brazilian architecture. While he provided visionary designs from his time studying in France, she was inspired in her role as the head of Rio’s Department for Popular Housing by the dramatic changes to social housing she witnessed being implemented in post-war England.

'What an amazing couple. They were talking about urbanism, architecture, engineering, and art in the living room. Dreaming of the changes they could bring about to Brazil,' says Jose Dos Guimaraens, assistant curator and researcher for an exhibition that seeks to shine the spotlight on Portinho’s remarkable career, currently on display at another of their marvellous achievements, the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro.

Their collaboration at Rio’s Department for Popular Housing challenged traditional notions of what was possible in the built environment, paving the way for Brazilian modernism and its remarkable synthesis of international principles with local conditions. Portinho’s technical expertise, managerial skill, political savvy and personal charisma were essential to transforming Reidy’s visionary designs into reality for thousands of working-class Brazilians.

Pedregulho: a masterpiece that redefined social housing

'Pedregulho was the masterpiece,' says Dos Guimaraens. '[With it] they are showing the poorest people in society that the government could give you the same house as a rich person.'

Built between 1948 and 1960, Pedregulho represented a radical departure from conventional social housing. While most projects focused on maximising units at minimal cost, Portinho dared to imagine that Brazil's working-class deserved beauty, art, and community facilities typically reserved for the elite. The complex featured stunning azulejo tile murals by celebrated artist Candido Portinari and another mural for the school by Roberto Burle Marx.

Built for local government employees to put them within 30 minutes of their place of work, the complex was shaped with high-quality materials and came with comprehensive community facilities, including a school, health centre, swimming pool, and communal laundry designed to liberate women from household drudgery.

'If you compare Pedregulho with Parque Guinle by Lúcio Costa, Parque Guinle was built for the upper class in Rio. Even Parque Guinle doesn't have Portinari panels,' notes Dos Guimaraens, highlighting the social project's unprecedented quality.

Architecture as social transformation

This wasn't just architecture—it was social transformation and, importantly for the fiercely feminist Portinho, empowering women through design. In her time at the head of Rio's Department of Popular Housing, Portinho refused to compromise on quality, fighting for what she called 'living spaces, not just apartments.'

'The projects of the Department of Popular Housing were housing with various uses, not only the residence, but also schools, leisure, art,' explains Aline Siqueira, curator of the exhibition. 'A project like Pedregulho brought with it the idea that everything you need to live in this space, you can have moments of pleasure and leisure, and that is part of your home, it belongs to you, and society.'

The complex even came with a regulatory guide teaching residents how to live in modern spaces, reflecting the era's belief that architecture could educate, empowering women in their daily lives by reducing time lost to daily chores. Yet Pedregulho's revolutionary approach was both its triumph and limitation. The project's ambitious scope made it expensive and difficult to replicate at scale.

Only one other project similar in scope — the Minhocao of Gavea — was completed during Portinho’s time at the Department of Popular Housing. Two other projects, Vila Isabel and Paquetá, with similar lofty ambitions, were only partially completed. Even the weekend residence she shared with Reidy from 1952 was designed as a model home to be replicated by anyone who wished to build their own place into the steep terrain of Rio de Janeiro. Unfortunately, even though the designs were made available for anyone to use, nobody did.

Portinho's optimistic vision for Brazilian social housing faded when faced with a political shift that meant Rio de Janeiro’s favelas we relocated to places like the Cidade da Deus suburb at around the same time as Pedregulho was being completed.

Building Brazil's cultural identity at MAM Rio

Dejected but unfaltering, Portinho went on to channel her energy to transform the fortunes of the Museum of Modern Art (MAM) in Rio de Janeiro. Joining as executive director in 1951, she worked alongside socialite Niomar Muniz Sodré. While her counterpart handled fundraising and cultivated social cachet with an international jet-set, Portinho managed daily operations and oversaw construction of the museum on reclaimed land adjacent to the Santos Dumont airport - fighting once again for the project to be designed by Reidy.

The revolutionary structure, Brazil’s first brutalist monument, was shaped entirely from concrete, paving the way for other familiar landmarks in other Brazilian cities, such as the Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo (MASP), designed by another cultured power couple, Lina Bo Bardi and Pietro Maria Bardi. Completed a decade before MASP, Reidy’s creation of democratic public space at MAM Rio unquestionably influenced Bo Bardi and many others.

Under Portinho’s leadership, MAM Rio became Brazil's most important art space in the 1950s and 1960s, and she helped organise exhibitions that brought Brazilian art to global attention, essentially curating the country's cultural identity on the world stage.

After leaving MAM Rio in 1966, Portinho continued with her passion for bringing art to everyone by introducing Brazilian contemporary art to the curriculum as director of the Superior School of Industrial Design. Throughout her career, she maintained that architecture and design could be vehicles for social change, democratizing access to beauty and quality.

Diplomatic genius in a male-dominated world

Portinho's unquestionable success is all the more remarkable given the male-dominated setting in which she operated. Born in 1903 and raised in a politically progressive household, she was just the third woman in Brazil to graduate as an engineer in 1925. In a workplace rife with machismo, her male colleagues challenged her to inspect a lightning rod atop city hall - expecting her to fail. Unknown to them, Portinho was an accomplished mountaineer who completed the task effortlessly, establishing a pattern of exceeding expectations that would be repeated in a lifetime spent breaking through glass ceilings.

'Carmen was very diplomatic,' observes Dos Guimaraens. 'And to be diplomatic, not confrontational, was a strategy.' This wasn't passive accommodation but calculated institutional change.

While male contemporaries often confronted systems head-on, Portinho understood that transformation required nuanced navigation of male-dominated spaces from within, argues Dos Guimaraens. She famously worked side-by-side with Bertha Lutz, the sister of her first husband and the founder of the Brazilian suffragette movement, to persuade President Getulio Vargas to give women the vote in 1932.

A legacy that endures

Portinho's legacy continues to resonate today as cities worldwide grapple with housing crises and social inequality. Pedregulho's integration of community facilities, art, and thoughtful urban planning principles remains as relevant now as when it was conceived. Unlike many social housing projects that deteriorated into slums, the developments she championed maintained their quality and community pride over decades.

'People are really proud to live in these places because there's a lot of quality,' notes Dos Guimaraens, highlighting Portinho's enduring influence on how we think about dignified housing for all citizens.

In an era of increasing housing precarity and social division, Carmen Portinho's vision offers a powerful counterpoint. The curved silhouettes and integrated communities in her projects remain not just architectural landmarks, but physical manifestations of the belief that the most disadvantaged citizens deserve the richest environments. Through diplomatic genius and unwavering commitment to quality, she rewrote Brazil's cultural narrative while proving that true revolution happens through persistent, strategic reimagination of what's possible.

Drone footage of Pedregulho by Andre Scarpa, with thanks to andrescarpa.com

'Carmen Portinho: Modernity in Construction' runs until March 2026 at MAM Rio, Brazil

For Brazilian artist and designer Danilo Reis, the path into design didn’t begin with academic choice. Instead, Reis started out as a carpenter’s assistant at the age of 12. ‘It was rather an intimate encounter with materials and manual creation. I painted with oils as a child, and at 12, I became a carpenter's assistant – my second craft. Years later, while studying architecture, I rediscovered my passion for woodworking. I am certain that this early contact with these ancient art forms in my youth was crucial to developing my signature style.’

Today, Reis works at the intersection of visual arts and design, crafting handmade wood pieces. ‘These works carry within them elements that evoke memory and ancestry, forming the core of my artistic identity,’ he says. This is best seen in his new series, titled ‘Ascensão’, which debuted at Vienna Design Week 2025 (26 September-5 October), where he is the first Black Brazilian designer to participate.

Get to know designer, artist and teacher Danilo Reis

Reis was born in Penha, located in the eastern part of São Paulo, and descended from migrant families from Minas Gerais and Bahia. Moving on from carpentry as a child, he went to architecture school, and later founded AYO Escola de Marcenaria (AYO School of Carpentry). At the forefront of his designs is a connection between ancestry and contemporary creation.

For his ‘Ascensão’ series, the word itself – meaning ‘rise’ – was a starting point. ‘It’s an invitation to materialise concepts,’ says the designer. ‘My inspiration comes from many sources: nature and the forces that act upon materials, architecture and its morphologies, and the ritualistic dimension that breathes life into the everyday.’

The collection comprises altars crafted from salvaged materials such as wood, stone and ceramics, and described by Reis as having ‘spiritual power’ and prompting ‘decolonial discourse’. ‘I believe spirituality was, and still is, a source of strength for the victories that the children of the African diaspora in the Americas achieve daily. I see this force manifest in all the acts we materialise, especially in the work of our people.’

The creative process encompasses three stages. Reis researches materials to salvage, deliberately using wood together with fragments of tools. ‘[These are] elements from the material base of society,’ he says, and he aims ‘to erect altars that celebrate this very heritage. I am reinscribing into the material world the presence and power of the energy that was offered to these elements.’

Next, he uses his carpentry skills to build the altars, which take the form of cabinets. But it's the final step that is perhaps the most intriguing. Reis conducts ritualistic performances to spiritually charge each piece. 'This final stage is the moment the piece ceases to be an object and becomes a vivified altar,’ he says. ‘It is an intimate moment where I consecrate the piece, suggesting its use. '

For the designer, it is important that his work taps into the ‘energy’ of the user. ‘I believe this is one of the great lessons that traditional peoples can offer us, in contrast to the massification of design, which suggests that thousands of people can use the same pieces in the same way. In this performance/ritual, I incorporate elements that complete the assemblage and carry a great symbolic and energetic charge.’ He likens this charge to that imbued in family photographs, or candles or water used in religious rituals.

Ultimately, Reis wants users of his work to feel at home with and be able to connect with his pieces, thanks to their materials, the signs of their making, and the performances conducted. ‘It is deeply satisfying to imagine people creating new ways to connect, both physically and spiritually, with design pieces.’

An upstate São Paulo house nestled on a sloped, suburban corner lot tells a story of inclusion and design ambition. The project, titled Casa MM, was conceived by Brazilian architecture firm Equipe Lamas, which worked closely with its clients – a couple wishing to live close to their daughters and grandchildren – who were after a fully accessible home with a wooden structure.

Discover Upstate São Paulo house Casa MM by Equipe Lamas

‘Casa MM begins with the residents’ wish for a single-level, welcoming home. The design looks to the cultural landscape of São José do Rio Pardo, where ceramic-tiled roofs, balanced proportions and natural materials shape a collective memory,’ explains practice founder and architect, Samuel Lamas.

‘These elements are reimagined in a contemporary way, for example, laminated eucalyptus beams spanning 16m, a gabled roof, and a palette of stone, wood and clay that echoes the city’s oldest constructions. The house extends this memory into the present, affirming both continuity with the landscape and its own contemporary identity.’

Lamas was careful to make sure the proposal did not mindlessly replicate the past, but rather created a thoughtful dialogue by being rooted in local identity. His goal is demonstrated through form, material, and a careful reinterpretation of traditional construction. The result is a light contemporary pavilion, resting on a base of São Tomé stone.

Lamas found it a challenge to work on the steeply angled corner plot as it ‘demanded a synthesis of programme and topography.’ However, with the incorporation of the stone base, the house is anchored to its site. At the same time, this gesture helped accommodate service spaces and secured the terrain. This solid-feeling foundation also creates a juxtaposition against the structural lightness of the timber pavilion atop.

The main volume sits under a gabled roof. Leading up to it, a side ramp completes the sequence and acts as a path that guides visitors to a tropical garden filled with native vegetation.

All bedrooms face north and are protected by movable freijó wood screens. They open up into a veranda with garden views. Variations in ceiling height add layers of visual intrigue to the space. The floors are finished in terrazzo, while in bedrooms, peroba wood flooring lends warmth.

The veranda, which overlooks the pool, acts as a transitional living space, merging indoor and outdoor lifestyles. ‘The veranda distils the essence of Casa MM,’ says Lamas. ‘It is both centre and threshold, where interior and exterior dissolve, where domestic life extends into the garden, and where shade, breeze and water compose an atmosphere of continuity. It embodies the meeting of tradition and modernity, transforming construction into lived experience.’ Through this space, visitors will find a bathroom to the right, a kitchen, and an office, while to the left lies a living room, two suites and the primary bedroom with a walk-in closet.

Casa MM is a fusion of comfort and a sense of place, rooted in the culture and the location that inspires it, as Lamas says: ‘The atmosphere is that of an oasis of intimacy within a residential setting. The experience conveys serenity and belonging, as if [you are] entering a place rooted in the city’s memory yet expressed in a contemporary voice.’

equipelamas.com

Meireles + Pavan Arquitetura has completed a new family house in São Paulo's verdant residential suburbs. FR House presents a remarkable series of sculpted spaces, linked by dramatic curved staircases and ranging across four floors.

Tour FR House in São Paulo, a home designed as a green, urban retreat

The house was intended as a design-filled urban retreat, with dense areas of planting strategically placed to enhance both privacy and a sense of being distanced from the city. All the façades have been given different screening treatment, from the monumental timbers at street level through to movable panels on the bedroom levels.

The house can be open and receptive to the environment, or closed off and intimate, a quality enhanced by the basement level with its bar, banquettes and windows through to the swimming pool.

Not a lot is given away by the street elevation. Tropical vegetation has been trained over the external walls and planters to create a lush but deliberately confusing front to the world. The entrance is down a linear gallery that inducts the visitor into the rich interior spaces, with filtered daylight, impressive contemporary furniture and the encroaching planting.

The ground floor is the most open part of the 1,350 sq m house, with all social spaces arranged around a terraced garden and pool, with a covered patio as well as a poolside deck. A long row of sliding glass doors disappears into the flank walls, while the continuous stone floor creates a true sense of continuity between inside and outside. Here, you’ll find the living room, dining area and kitchen, with equivalent spaces available out on the terraces, including a barbecue area.

Clever use of planting gives the impression of a dense, endless jungle, as does the use of an organically shaped pool, with fronds draped naturally over the far edge. The green colour of the tiles comes from Vitória Régia quartzite, a local stone.

The living area is a masterpiece of furniture curation, dominated by de Sede’s instantly recognisable DS-600 sofa, originally designed in 1972 by Ulrich Berger and others and here arranged in a semi-circle facing the hearth. Other seating choices include Erbeto Carboni’s Delfino armchairs from Arflex and Reversível armchair by Martin Eisler for Tacchini. There are also Lina armchairs by Gianfranco Frattini, also Tacchini.

Studio MK27’s Tradição table forms the centrepiece of the dining room, alongside Softshell chairs by Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec and iconic Standard chairs by Jean Prouvé, both from Vitra. Another classic can be seen overhead – Poul Henningsen’s PH Artichoke pendant lights.

The house has a fully custom kitchen, arranged into a trapezoidal floorplan with stone floor and countertops and bespoke wooden cabinets. The kitchen also houses an island for informal meals and seating. From the living area, a truly sculptural staircase formed from wood and stone ascends to the bedrooms, top lit by a skylight.

Upstairs, you’ll find the bedrooms along with a gym and home office and utility areas. The primary bedroom gets the garden view, with a long, covered balcony and folding wooden trellised panels. Blackout blinds add another layer of privacy. Adjoining this is an ensuite bathroom, lit by a semi-circular skylight.

The house is topped with another terrace, a further chance to blur the distinction between architecture and landscape. The gym resides at this level, with a balcony that opens out at treetop level, alongside an outdoor lounge area.

The theme of shaped and semi-circular cutouts and skylights continues downstairs, where a large, frosted glass prism brings daylight into the garage and casts ethereal lighting effects at night. Further interventions can be found in the lower-level disco, with its circular viewing windows that offer underwater views of the pool, providing both filtered light and intriguing glimpses.

The architects, André Pavan and Bruno Meireles, working on this project with Rômulo Machado, describe FR House as ‘a synthesis of architecture, nature, art, and functionality’. ‘It is all brought together in a cohesive, sensitive whole,’ they explain, ‘It is a project that reflects the core values of our studio - technical precision, sensory experience, and attention to detail.’

MeirelesPavan.com.br

‘Lightness & Tension’, an exhibition hosted at Christie’s in Los Angeles (5-19 September 2025 ), brings together furniture from Brazilian modernism pioneer Joaquim Tenreiro and contemporary Brazilian artist Lucas Simões. Organised by design dealer and curator Ulysses de Santi, the show creates a dialogue between past and present, reflecting on the evolution of craftsmanship and design in Brazil.

Lightness and Tension: Joaquim Tenreiro and Lucas Simões

Joaquim Tenreiro (1906-1992) played a central role in shaping the identity of Brazilian modernism, a midcentury style that remains hugely popular for its combination of bold, clean lines and natural materials, including indigenous Brazilian hardwoods. ‘Tenreiro’s work distilled elegance, proportion and craftsmanship into something timeless,’ says de Santi, who centres his dealing and curating on design of the genre.

Tenreiro’s work on show at ‘Lightness & Tension’ includes seating and tables made between 1935 and 1960. His ‘Loveseat’, from 1955, conjoins two solid rosewood armchairs, their carved seats and backs providing sculptural, rounded counterpoints to the precise rectilinear geometry of the frames. The high-back dining chairs from 1935-40, meanwhile, combine rosewood with woven cane, striking a more delicate presence.

Having made a seismic impact on the trajectory of Brazilian design, Tenreiro spent his later years working primarily in sculpture instead of furniture – perhaps a natural progression of his love for crafting materials into expressive forms.

Lucas Simões, meanwhile, established himself as an artist before more recently turning to furniture – and the works on show as part of ‘Lightness & Tension’ represent his design debut.

In Simões’ furniture, metal and concrete create bold, graphic lines – often curved or rippling – while the occasional presence of velvet-upholstered forms brings unexpected softness and comfort. Some of Simões’ sculptural works are also showcased in the exhibition, making clear the connection between his artistic and design practices, rooted in similar material explorations.

‘What fascinates me most about Tenreiro – and resonates with me personally – is the way he navigated a dual career as both an artist and a designer,’ says Simões. ‘He consistently approached furniture design through a sculptural lens, developing innovative techniques that blurred the boundaries between the two disciplines. This fluid exchange gave his minimalist design a distinctive conceptual depth – one that continues to feel both radical and relevant.’

Although he concedes that Brazilian modernism is ‘part of my visual memory’, and something for which he holds great respect, Simões did not seek to reference the tradition in his first furniture pieces. What drives him, he explains, is ‘contemporary approaches to rethinking materials, experimenting with forms, and probing the relationship between function and sculpture’.

De Santi was drawn to Simões’ work for its architectural sensibility and ‘intuitive sensitivity to material and form that goes beyond function’, the curator explains. While it may not have been conscious, he believes Simões’ work connects to the ethos of Brazilian modernism through its material honesty and clarity of proportion. ‘Even though his palette is very different from Tenreiro’s, the underlying rigour and sense of balance are part of the same lineage,’ he says.

Placing the works from Tenreiro and Simoes in dialogue with one another allows the visitor to see the ‘through-line’, says de Santi, and demonstrate how ideas about form, furniture and material exploration evolve. The title of the show reflects the ‘essential duality’ in both designers’ work, he adds, combining a ‘visual and structural lightness’ with a ‘quiet tension in how elements are balanced’.

Simões also created the scenography for ‘Lightness & Tension’, including a steel grid floor and mounds of sand supporting selected works. ‘The idea was to bring the raw materials I work with in the studio directly into the exhibition space, presented in their primal state,’ he says. ‘By placing these elements alongside the finished works, the scenography creates a dialogue between process and result, fragility and solidity, potential and completion.’

‘Lightness & Tension’ is on show at Christie’s Los Angeles, 5 -19 September 2025

‘A garden has to be imperfect, intuitive, instinctive,’ says Brazilian landscape architect Rodrigo Oliveira. It’s a philosophy that has made him one of Brazil's most sought-after landscape professionals. A naturalistic perspective – inspired by Japanese garden methodology and the asymmetric beauty of nature itself – has defined Oliveira's 30-year career. Rather than imposing order on the landscape, he creates what he calls 'spontaneous-looking gardens that blend seamlessly into the surroundings’. The result is deceptively simple: gardens that appear as if nothing was deliberately done there, yet achieve profound harmony between built form and nature.

We meet and chat with Rodrigo Oliveira

The journey to this mindset began in Oliveira’s hometown of Paraná in southern Brazil, where gardens were an intrinsic part of his childhood. ‘I used to take care of the gardens in all the houses we lived in,’ he recalls. And when landscaping was not yet a 'big thing’, he studied agronomy at the Federal University of Viçosa, graduating in 1993. After working under contract with other landscape companies and studying arboriculture in Florida for a year, he established his independent practice, Rodrigo Oliveira Paisagismo in 2005.

Today, his São Paulo-based studio is one of Brazil’s most respected landscape practices and employs 40 people, including architects, engineers, marketing specialists, and dedicated gardeners. The breakthrough that transformed Oliveira’s career came in 2005 through an unexpected collaboration, when Isay Weinfeld invited him to create a garden for the house the architect was designing for the Brazilian film director Hector Babenco in São Paulo. Oliveira seized the opportunity to create something genuinely natural. ‘That was the key point in the beginning of my career and changed my path completely,’ he reflects.

The garden featured a dramatic approach where visitors entered from the street into what Weinfeld has described as ‘a forest’ – a long meandering walk through dense foliage without sight of the house, until a sudden turn brings Casa Babenco into view. This cinematic experience, befitting a collaboration with a film director, established Oliveira's reputation for creating landscapes that unfold like carefully crafted narratives. The project led to ongoing partnerships with Brazil's architectural elite – Bernardes Arquitetura, and Studio Arthur Casas, among them.

The Patios House, designed by Studio MK27, exemplifies Oliveira's naturalistic approach. Located on Rio de Janeiro's coast, the beach house features landscaped courtyards that serve as delicate threads connecting built elements and outdoor spaces. Equally impressive is the AEA House by Jacobsen Arquitetura, set within 7,000 square metres of dense forest near Rio de Janeiro. Here, Oliveira's naturalistic philosophy finds perfect expression. The landscape preserves existing vegetation of mature trees and exposed rock formations to create a seamless fusion between the new garden and the surrounding environment.

Oliveira is currently working on the Amauri 306 Building in São Paulo, another Isay Weinfeld project. It is a further refinement of his practice, where gardens distributed across different floors blend seamlessly with the physical architecture. Developers, he observes, appreciate ‘gardens in their buildings, not just for the aesthetic, but for the city environment too’.

This appreciation reflects Oliveira's understanding of landscape's broader role in contemporary Brazil, his naturalistic approach offering a compelling alternative to more formal design traditions. By embracing what he calls the ‘irregularity’ of natural systems – their textures, movement, and seasonality – Oliveira is creating gardens that evolve beautifully over time while requiring minimal maintenance. In a world increasingly concerned with environmental stewardship, his philosophy resonates. The best gardens don't fight nature. They celebrate it.

This is the latest instalment of The Inside Story, Wallpaper’s series spotlighting intriguing, innovative and industry-leading interior design.

It’s 2025, and designers are being tasked with creating homes for content creators – the newest subset of clientele with cash to flash and aesthetics to consider.

That was the challenge Brazilian architecture firm Gurgel D’Alfonso Arquitetura embraced when commissioned to design a home for a family of culinary content creators. The couple, who run a YouTube channel, needed a space that would integrate their family life and their work.

The result is the Fidalga Apartment, a penthouse in São Paulo’s Vila Madalena neighbourhood. In the home’s natural light and soaring ceilings, the couple saw the potential for both comfort and camera-readiness.

The first job of a renovation was to make the kitchen the anchor of the home. Walls were removed to create an open, continuous space for cooking, filming and dining. At its centre is the undeniable showstopper: an epic Vitória Régia quartzite island. Surrounding this are layers of natural materials like warm woods and stone, offset by industrial touches like stainless steel. Also vying for the attention of observers: gleaming gold brass cabinetry.

In the living room, a custom masonry bookshelf, accented with Sucupira wood, incorporates the air conditioning duct – the home is full of such clever design quirks; elsewhere, large windows and breeze block partitions significantly reduce reliance on artificial lighting. The window frames match the wood of the freestanding furniture, which comprises a mix of family heirlooms and modern design, including restored Sergio Rodrigues chairs, an armchair by Luisa Attab and side tables by Maximiliano Crovato.

Upstairs – home to the bedrooms and a home office – the architectural language shifts. It feels airier, with the exposed gabled roof enhancing ceiling height, while the decor leans softer, filled with simple forms. The office is home to a light blue epoxy floor and a Sucupira wood desk.

The primary suite revolves around a built-in central volume made from Virolinha plywood. This multifunctional unit integrates the bed, headboard, closet, TV lounge and storage, flanked by stainless steel Formica bedside modules. A carpeted base forms a step, and doubles to conceal electrical systems – another example of the home’s clean, smart detailing. Finally, the bathroom is clad in terracotta-hued ceramic tiles with a monolithic floor that flows into a concrete soaking tub.

As the lines between work and home continue to blur, our living spaces are evolving to reflect this shift. The Fidalga Apartment is a set for both daily life and on-screen action, showing that, in 2025, architecture is as much about flexibility as it is about aesthetics.

Casa Taipa is located in Lago Sul, a district to the south of Brasília. Designed by Valéria Gontijo + Arquitetos, the single-storey house covers 620 sq m and is set within a small private estate. The house is the first of four residences to be built for the same family within this estate, combining a close connection to the landscape with traditional building techniques and a contemporary aesthetic.

Arranged in an L-shaped plan with views over nearby Lake Paranoá, Casa Taipa is named for its rammed-earth construction method. Known as taipa in Portugal, the process is centuries old, relying on knowledge passed down by skilled practitioners. Under the direction of the architects and the client – who provided on-site supervision and technical guidance for the local construction team – the house demonstrates a rigour and clarity of form despite the ancient methods.

In its simplest form, rammed-earth construction uses large wooden moulds into which raw earth is compacted, to form walls that bear the imprint of the multiple layers of soil. In addition to using on-site materials, the process also creates a strong association with the local landscape. Other advantages are the high levels of thermal and acoustic performance, creating interiors that are cool and calm.

‘We were drawn to taipa precisely because it escapes the usual codes of concrete and stone,’ says Valéria Gontijo. ‘We wanted something more experimental yet still built with pure forms.’ The textured walls are paired with other natural materials like timber and cork, with wooden floors and ceilings accompanied by earthy-toned furniture and fittings.

Accommodation is divided between two wings, linked by a glazed walkway. The entrance porch and carport are all formed from rammed earth, setting up an aesthetic that runs between the interior and exterior spaces. Upon entering, a wall of sliding glass doors to the left reveals the bedroom wing and rectangular pool, as well as a long, covered veranda.

The kitchen, dining area and living room form a single space that occupies the bulk of the larger wing, with a separate catering kitchen and utility areas tucked away out of sight. Both sides of the wing feature sliding glass doors, allowing the entire space to be opened up to cross breezes and views. According to the architects, ‘Every space was conceived to encourage togetherness, with lower ceilings and a warm atmosphere – like a shelter made of earth, wood, and natural light.’

The restrained palette is much in evidence, with rammed earth brought into the interiors, paired with granite flooring, reclaimed wood joinery and latticework screens made from the wood of the local biribá tree. The kitchen is a focal point. ‘This house is about receiving, about celebrating,’ says Gontijo, ‘Everything here is sensorial. You feel the texture of the walls, the muffled sound inside, the soft light filtering through – it’s a house that embraces you.’

The bedroom wing is reached through the glass walkway, with a roof made from biribá slats. The walls are also screened with the timber, mounted onto opening panels that moderate light and privacy, opening up onto a landscape designed by Ana Paula Roseo. In addition to a primary suite and substantial closet, there’s also a guest suite, which doubles up as a media room when the owners are on their own.

The architecture studio is run by three directors, Valéria Gontijo, Isabela Moura and Isabela Valença. Based in Brasília, the studio prides itself on combining a contemporary aesthetic with traditional techniques and materials.

ValeriaGontijo.com, @ValeriaGontijoArquitetos

The Brumadinho Memorial, designed by Belo Horizonte-based architect Gustavo Penna, stands as a profound testament to the 272 lives lost in the catastrophic dam collapse of 25 January 2019.

Unlike traditional memorials, often erected decades after tragedy, this commemorative space was created while 'they were still searching for the bodies', as Penna highlights poignantly, offering families and the community a place to process grief, preserve memory, and resist the collective amnesia of this ultimately preventable disaster.

Brazil's Brumadinho Memorial: born from collective grief

'I never imagined that I would make a memorial in my life,' Penna reflects. 'After I experienced this, I feel like it has changed architecture for me. I was able to stand with the victims, create a tool of protest, of indignation. A fortress where the feeling of opposition to the erasure of this tragedy can live, a place that is against forgetting.'

On entry, the memorial's monumental space immediately communicates its purpose. The twisted, fragmented pavilion is made of exposed concrete coloured by a red pigment extracted from the toxic iron ore waste that buried 251 employees of mining giant Vale as they ate lunch in a company canteen and another 21 local inhabitants in what remains Brazil’s biggest workplace tragedy.

Its thick, undulating concrete form represents the shattered dreams and the overwhelming force of the mud that devastated everything in its path.

The pavilion’s flowing shape takes its lead from a small rectangular skylight that is positioned perfectly so that on 25 January each year at exactly 12.28pm – the moment of the disaster – a beam of light cuts through the ceiling to strike a heart-shaped druse of crystals to flood the space with the light that failed to arrive for the victims on that ill-fated day.

A small chapel-like space opens outwards to the grounds of the memorial, offering visitors the chance to collect their thoughts before connecting fully with the emotions buried in the rest of the grounds. Rather than a vessel designed to contain the tale of the tragedy, says Penna, 'this space is totally porous. It communicates with the outside, and it proposes a path. It is not there to create answers, it is to generate questions.'

After reflection comes memory

The path that Penna’s porous pavilion points to is a jagged, 230m cleavage – a literal and symbolic rift that cuts through the terrain to point towards the exact site of the dam failure.

The sound and first glimpse of that tragic tectonic shift was central to Penna’s design process: 'The first image that came to me was the crack,' he says. 'At that moment, the disaster was inevitable. That crack was in my head. And it's there for eternity. This fissure is the question. This fissure is the denunciation. This fissure is the line that separated life from death.'

As visitors are guided down this trench-like corridor, they come to the names of each victim engraved on the walls. Calcium leaching from the cement around the iron rods used to hold the shuttering in place gives the impression that the walls are shedding their own tears for the dead.

The memorial’s depth encourages introspection of the horrors of being buried underground, while creating a physical manifestation of mourning and an obvious nod to the heavens above. Just before the midway point, three spaces have been carved into the earth. One to the left and two to the right. To the left, memory. To the right, testimonial, and a sacred space that holds the recovered remains of the victims.

In memory, the families honour their loved ones. Their portraits, stories and cherished possessions are packed tightly into an underground vessel whose potency is amplified by a moving soundtrack penned by Brazilian composer Berna Ceppas that evokes a potent mix of emotions.

In a testimonial, the tragic story plays out on repeat using company CCTV footage that captured almost every angle of the terrible events that unfolded that day. Emerging from the darkness of these powerful places, visitors reconnect with the heavens from deep beneath the earth with a suspended sculpture that towers high above Penna’s archaeological landmark.

More tears flow from this anthropic, uniquely human steel structure, forming two streams that eventually meet before falling into a commemorative lake. Tilted at an angle, the square structure represents the destructive imbalance of human intervention in the surrounding landscape.

'Man’s unique creation is the square,' says Penna. 'The square doesn't exist in nature. If you see a square somewhere, man was there,' he says. 'Why does this square head cry? Because it is the finitude, it is the fallibility of man thinking that he controlled everything; that day he didn't control anything,' explains Penna. 'This tragedy is caused by the negligence, greed and stupidity of man.'

Flowers for the dead and the living

Above ground, 272 yellow ipê trees have been planted – one for each victim. These native Brazilian trees serve as living memorials that transform with the seasons. 'The ipê has a message,' says Penna. 'In summer, it is full of leaves to make an overhang. In winter, it loses all its leaves to let sunlight through. And when the sun presses, it turns yellow, full of flowers. Life goes on. Never lose hope. It is a manifestation of hope.' The shape of the flower features throughout the memorial as a symbol for each one of the victims and the legacy they left behind.

Brumadiño Memorial’s journey culminates at a viewpoint that offers a final contemplative space overlooking the valley transformed by the disaster. Below, trucks shuttle around those still working on a five-year excavation to recover the final remains of the last two victims or 'jewels' as they are referred to by the families.

This area represents transcendence and continuity, looking towards the future while honouring the past. The memorial succeeds as both a place for personal grief and collective memory.

'For an architect, being able to help these people, to give visibility, three-dimensionality to the feeling is an honour,' says Penna. 'You can't put a feeling in a bottle. You don't measure it by the metre, you don't weigh it. It has weight, but it has no size; it is immeasurable. So when you create an environment like this, I think you give a real dimension to things,' he says, pointing to the mountains in the distance where he has plans to erect a steel structure that will both form the shape of the hands of a clock marking 12.28 and point to the exact place where the dam broke.

Through thoughtful design that connects visitors to both the tragedy and the surrounding landscape, the memorial resists what Penna calls 'the erasure of time and history', ensuring that such preventable disasters are never forgotten.

A glimpse of this Brazilian garden house will have you thinking of the country's lush, biodiverse jungles and wild nature. Yet the home, designed by emerging architecture studio Kika Camasmie Arq, sits in the middle of the bustling metropolis of São Paulo, nestled within a discreet, leafy site.

Get lost inside this green garden house

The project is the refresh of an existing property, which was spruced up and transformed into a green urban oasis by the practice. Blending indoors and outdoors living, as well as nature and architecture, the home feels like it lives in a world of liminal spaces.

Hidden behind a plain, nondescript door on the street side, the design focused on the outdoors, crafting open-air living spaces for its residents. It is 'perfect for relaxing on sunny afternoons, hosting friends or simply slowing down during long summer days,' the architects write.

A wooden pergola structure helps define the transition between inside and outside in the project - which is titled Residência GGL. The timber structure frames views and also areas for relaxation and entertaining, wrapping terraces and routes that connect the newly planted garden with the home's indoors.

At the same time, this clever intervention encourages cross ventilation through open, flowing spaces; brings in plenty of natural light, deep inside the house; and creates an inviting atmosphere, perfect for contemporary living.

In a country that has perfected architecture for indoor/outdoor lifestyles, this garden house offers a new iteration to the genre, which has been crafted generously by studio founder, architect Kika Camasmie and his Sao Paulo-based team.

Tetro Arquitetura describes its most recently completed Brazilian house design, Linho House in Nova Lima, as a ‘narrative crafted in architecture.’ With a clearly defined brief from a creative client – a fashion designer – the team has continued its recent run of spectacular private houses with this expansive hillside residence.

Tour this Brazilian house on a hillside

The site, just south of the city of Belo Horizonte in the southeastern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, is in a sprawling residential neighbourhood of generous plots on a series of rolling hillsides. The design team, Carlos Maia, Débora Mendes and Igor Macedo, have designed a private house across two levels, set beneath a dramatic curved concrete roof that spans the entire length of the structure.

As well as referencing the grand structural gestures of architects like Oscar Niemeyer, the architects describe the roof as ‘evoking the poetic image of a white cloth stretched on a clothesline.’ Not only does this make a direct reference to the client’s profession, but it also gives the house a sense of lightness – ‘as if it were a fabric gently floating over the landscape.’

The curved roof sits above a floor given over to living, dining and cooking, and also provides covered terraces at each end of the house. The built area extends to 1,300m2 and the length of this space is an impressive 45 metres. As well as two sets of service cores and internal and external staircases leading downstairs, there are two separate sitting areas and three dining spaces.

This generous space is kept intimate and dynamic by its integration with the external terrace (and infinity pool), as well as the diaphanous curtains that line the west-facing façade.

To the east, the façade is shielded from the street by timber brise-soleils, which are mirrored by the timber cladding in the lower-level bedrooms. The exterior walls of this floor are clad in dark slate to better blend with the terrain, with a ramp leading down from the access road to parking in the under croft.

In addition to staff accommodation and a utility area at the southern end of the house, there is a wing of three ensuite bedrooms, set at an angle beneath the pool above.

The large primary suite juts out over the hillside at the north end of the site, beneath the main terrace. It has its own full-length balcony as well as a marble clad bathroom and dressing area. It adjoins a gym and private sitting room. On the floor above, there’s also a spa and two kitchens, one dedicated to entertaining.

The architects describe the Linho House as a mirror to the life and work of their client. ‘[It is] a light and poetic object resting on the mountain - a silent homage to the art of stitching lives, fabrics, and spaces together,’ they say.

This new forest retreat by Arkitito Arquitetura is a response to a client’s desire to be immersed in the landscape and vegetation of the municipality of Campos do Jordão, in the heart of the Mantiqueira Mountains in the south-east of Brazil. Covering a modest 176 sq m, the Araucarias House consists of two independent structures, a main house and a separate guest house, united by a shared terrace that flows between the two offset buildings.

The principal house is subdivided into two components, connected by a glazed central entrance hallway. To the south, two compact bedrooms and a bathroom, while to the north is a large kitchen/diner and sitting area, opening out onto a deck. To the north of this lies the smaller guest house, a curved structure comprising of a two-bedroom sleeping wing and a compact kitchen/diner with a high, mono-pitched roof.

The site slopes gently and the structures are elevated on shallow columns to preserve the contours. Both houses are aligned in order to preserve existing trees – the Araucarias pines that give the house its name - and make the best of the views across the site, whilst preserving the privacy of the outlook from the bedrooms.

Raising the houses above the plot also helps shield the structures from ground moisture – the temperatures here can vary between cold and humid, especially with high annual rainfall. A variety of roofings were deployed to minimise maintenance requirements and make the most of thermal insulation. Shingle-clad siding provides easy upkeep and withstands changes in temperature.

Poured and polished concrete floors tone with the concrete steps, terraces and benches on the exterior, with broad concrete window frames on the interior easing the transition between inside and out. The ethos is low maintenance and robust, as befits a house designed for occasional use and holiday rental. Interior walls are rough plastered and painted white. Attention to details extends to the bathroom skylights, which have specially hardened glass in order to withstand falling pinecones.

The design team utilised marine plywood, known for its stability in humid climates. Bespoke elements include the kitchen, shelves and storage, as well as the long timber-clad guest house bedroom corridor.

Exterior landscaping is modest and confined only to the terraced areas. The rest of the plot has been left natural to encourage native flora and fauna to encroach on the surroundings as much as possible.

Minas Gerais, the inland state in south-eastern Brazil, is a rich landscape of colonial-era towns full of cobblestone streets and baroque churches. Located in this area's south is the municipality of Gonçalves, where the brand-new Casa Koba can be found. This part of the country is known for its cold, high-altitude climate, an environment with which the home's authors, architecture practice Estudio Haa, are familiar, having developed several projects in the region.

Tour Casa Koba in Minas Gerais, by Estudio Haa

This is the firm's most recent project, located 1,450m above sea level, has a steep slope and covers an area of ​​3.7 hectares. ‘The client envisioned a terracotta brick house that didn’t feel prefabricated,’ says studio co-founder Homã Alvico. ‘To achieve this, I researched many constructions from North Africa made of earth and ceramics. We aimed for a very natural and primitive materiality, working almost exclusively with ceramic and wood.’

To make the project happen, Estudio Haa decided to work with local contractors who lived in the same neighbourhood as the construction site and were familiar with the terrain's difficulties. ‘The site itself posed the greatest challenge,’ said Alvico. ‘It’s a steep plot with southern exposure. To the north, a nearby mountain blocks both sunlight and views, while to the south, we have a sweeping panorama of the mountains, with Pedra do Baú as a highlight.

‘In our latitude, north-facing openings are crucial for sunlight, especially during winter, since the south receives little to no sun in the colder months. Creating those northern openings was essential for thermal comfort. Beyond solar orientation, the challenge was to organise the programme so that the entire house could function on a single level, maintaining flat zones and smooth indoor-outdoor transitions on a very sloped terrain.’

Working with this in mind, the house was crafted on a wooden plane as a series of 'blocks'. As a result, Casa Koba's layout was divided into four functional spaces. The first section served as the family’s private areas: the primary bedroom suite, TV room, and children's room.

The second section is reserved for guest suites, while the third connects to all other spaces through a light and airy living area that blends indoor and outdoor lifestyles. The fourth area is located on the lower level and comprises a garage, storage room, wine cellar, and gym.

‘The social area and its roof are one of my favourite parts of the home,’ Alvico told Wallpaper*. ‘I love its lightness and transparency – the way northern light filters through the curved ceiling creates a soft, ever-changing glow. The space feels open and light, yet warm and embracing, thanks to the material palette and its relationship with the landscape.

‘I also have a particular affection for the guest bathroom section. It’s compact and highly functional, but it was designed to feel like you’re showering in the middle of the forest. A small internal dry garden offers a visual connection to the outside while preserving privacy.’

The space offers a constant connection to the outdoors, allowing for a deep sense of informality and ease, as Alvico says: ‘This is not a “serious” house – it was designed to foster sociability and close human interactions. It’s meant to be lived in, not just seen. The space doesn’t impose rules; it invites freedom and comfort.’

ha.arq.br

This new Brazilian design near São Paulo – JF Residence in São José do Rio Preto – is the latest project of KG Studio. Covering 600 sq m across two floors, the home is arranged across a rectangular plan with an entrance and carport at the south elevation and a north-facing garden façade.

Explore the Brazilian design of this private home: take the tour

The latter is the focal point of the house, with two ‘layers’ of living space taking up one half of the ground floor. From a modest and low-key front door to the left of the carport, visitors are led down a generous hall that leads directly to the living room. Here the house opens up to its full width, accommodating a generous dining room and island kitchen.

This interior volume is mirrored by a covered exterior living and dining space, complete with seating area, dining table and outdoor kitchen. Sliding glass doors between the two spaces allow the whole space to be opened up to the garden. From here, one steps out to the full width timber deck, which sits alongside the pool.

The accommodation is framed by two solid stone-clad walls that run the length of the house, anchoring the house to the site and increasing the sense of enclosure for the living spaces. The landscaping by Mônica Costa includes dense planting along the site boundaries to further increase the sense of privacy and retreat.

Inside, it’s another story, with the fluid inside-outside spaces and generous entertainment areas promoting ‘integration and conviviality’, according to the architects. A generous service area is also located on the ground floor, with separate access from outside and to the garden. The hall also contains the double-height stairwell, with a sleek cantilevered glass and timber staircase rising up over a small internal garden to the bedrooms on the floor above.

The first floor is set back beneath an oversailing roof, allowing for slender covered balconies at the rear. The monolithic metal panels of the garage and front door are replaced with vertical timber slats, giving the street façade a sense of calm but impervious mystery. Here you’ll find three generous en-suite bedrooms, two of which have their own balcony overlooking the garden and pool.

Throughout the house, there is extensive custom, built-in storage and furniture that preserves the lines and volume of the living spaces. Timber-clad ceilings and walls are paired with stone floors to evoke classic Brazilian architecture. These elements are paired with key pieces of contemporary design, including ‘Tonico’ armchairs by Sérgio Rodrigues and Arthur Casas’ ‘Amorfa’ coffee table. Throughout the house, lights and pendants have been supplied by Astep in Italy.

KG Studio was founded by Felipe Kilaris Gallani, following experience at Triptyque Architecture, Isay Weinfeld and Jacobsen Arquitetura, and Victória Lacerda Chaves, following her work at Estudio Campana, Arthur Casas and Bernardes Arquitetura.

São Paulo’s Jardins neighbourhood is known for its museums, upscale restaurants and leafy streets, where some of the metropolis’ most coveted residences hide behind palm trees and purple jacarandas. It’s here, on a 200 sq m plot surrounded by two-storey houses in the Jardim Paulistano area, that WF Architects has slotted in a new home for a couple who wanted their very own contemporary oasis.

Step inside this leafy São Paulo residence

The São Paulo-based practice, led by architects Beatriz Fujinaka and Stephanie Wolff, was tasked with conceiving a compact but ‘welcoming home, characterised by fluidity between internal spaces and generous visual integration with surrounding nature’, a somewhat challenging brief due to the size and location of the plot.

‘The small size of the plot and the legal zoning requirements were obstacles to meeting the client's requirements, because they wanted generous internal spaces with good circulation and accessibility,’ explain the architects. ‘They built the house with the future in mind, wanting to be independent in their old age, and therefore requested an elevator, which took up considerable space on the floors.’

The result is a transparent and open-plan ground floor, wrapped in a backdrop of greenery on three sides, with floor-to-ceiling windows allowing full access to the courtyard garden. ‘We really like how the dining and living rooms integrated with the kitchen provide great spaciousness,’ say the architects, who had to work on a complex structural study to create the fluid layout using ribbed slabs and peripheral pillars.

The ground floor supports a distinct upper volume wrapped in a system of vertical Arkas slats, which function as movable brise-soleils that modulate sunlight and preserve privacy. ‘The Arkas shutters create a sense of a suspended, greater volume in the upper part without increasing the built area, while maintaining the appearance of wooden boxes, but with lighter, low-maintenance material,’ say Fujinaka and Wolff.

Natural stone was used for the external walls and floors, while the interiors feature porcelain tiles, Dekton worktops and beautifully crafted veneered wood panels and joinery. All were chosen for their durability and low maintenance, in keeping with the brief’s focus on future-proofing the residence.

The top-floor multi-purpose room opens onto a sunny deck with a hot tub and views of the surrounding treetops. This includes a pre-existing pitangueira tree in the centre of the parking space in front of the house. ‘It ended up being kept at the insistence of the landscape architect, Rodrigo Oliveira, sacrificing one of the parking spaces,’ explain the architects. ‘However, it was the right decision because it overcame the arid appearance of the garages at the entrance to the house.

‘The vegetation plays a fundamental role in the sense of wellbeing [residents] feel inside the house. It was necessary to align expectations regarding the type of plant that would be suitable for the narrow flowerbeds, to allow for good circulation around the house. It is dense vegetation, but it does not take up too much of the usable garden area.’

Indeed, it is the lush tropical vegetation that surrounds the residence and forms a backdrop for its pared-back interiors that really makes the project stand out, hiding the boundary walls behind a green screen and accentuating the feeling of privacy and cosiness in the heart of São Paulo’s urban jungle.

@wfarquitetos

@rodrigooliveira_paisagismo

The authors of this São Paulo apartment, Brazilian architect Arthur Casa and his team, are not just the brains behind its elegant interior – they also designed the entire building. Sete, a mixed-use block in São Paulo’s Vila Nova Conceição, contains private residences, including this home for a couple who wanted a base to host family and friends, and to showcase their extensive art collection.

Step inside this calming São Paulo apartment

Since 1990, the team of designers, architects and urbanists at São Paulo and NY-based Studio Arthur Casas have specialised in looking at the whole picture, creating homes and buildings that are greater than the sum of their parts – including Pacaembu House, winner of Best Urban Bolthole in the 2024 Wallpaper* Design Awards.

‘For me, designing both the core and the shell is essential. Creating the building as well as the interiors is a natural extension of the process,’ explains founder Arthur Casas. ‘When we have that continuity, we’re able to achieve harmony between scale, materiality, and function – something that is felt by those who inhabit the space, even if only intuitively.’

The Sete building is located just a few metres away from Ibirapuera Park, and despite being in the heart of a busy megalopolis, the views here are incredibly lush, with floor-to-ceiling windows framing the park’s greenery.

‘Apartment Sete is housed in a building whose architecture enhances natural light, cross ventilation, and integration with its surroundings – qualities that are directly reflected in the interior design,’ says Casas. ‘One of the central elements that establishes this dialogue is the cobogó [perforated tile panels] specially designed for the building. In addition to defining the façade's appearance, it also shapes the apartment experience by filtering light, offering privacy, and establishing a clear identity.’

This backdrop and the owners’ collection of artworks are partly why the interiors have been kept so subtle. The pared-back palette means the focus here is on the choice of materials and their various textures: exposed concrete slabs and pillars are paired with Santa Margherita terrazzo floors, warm oak parquet and wood panelling and cabinetry.

‘I really appreciate the way we applied terrazzo, connecting different moments within the project,’ says Casas. ‘It appears on the flooring in the social area, climbs halfway up the corridor wall, and re-emerges in custom-designed furniture details, like the console that wraps around the sofa. This continuity between material and surface creates a visual unity that reinforces the sense of coherence we always strive for.’

From the vintage 1950s door handles to the cobogó walls that filter the natural light, every detail adds to the general scheme. Meanwhile, the carefully planned layout includes a series of interconnected social areas, ranging from a kitchen, dining room and living room to a home cinema.

Many of the designs featured here are by Casas himself, including the ‘Fusca’ sofa for Micasa, ‘Shops’ bench and ‘Bala Soft’ side table in the living room, the ‘Rino’ dining table and lighting such as the ‘Belly’ and ‘Grampo’ table lamps for Studio Objeto.

These are complemented by design classics by Jorge Zalsupin; contemporary furniture by Gubi, Zanotta and Etel; and artworks by Liuba Wolf, Robert Rauschenberg, León Ferrari, Daniel Senise and Ana Maria Tavares.

In the kitchen, discreet cabinetry conceals a complete set of Gaggenau appliances, and a cantilevered metal table is surrounded by ‘Jupiter’ stools by Johanson Design.

The serene main bedroom comes with delicate lighting and a wooden ceiling, while its en-suite bathroom features various niches and a ‘Mineral’ bathtub designed by Casa for Vallvé. Meanwhile, a pair of home offices with mirrored layouts turn into cosy spaces for the grandchildren on weekends – the low cabinets are perfect to store all their toys.

The design looks effortless, but of course there was plenty of work needed to fit everything in. ‘One of the biggest challenges of the project was reconciling the automation, air conditioning, and lighting systems in the social area, where the exposed concrete ceiling made it difficult to conceal equipment,’ write the architects. The solution was the creation of a perimeter cove that hides air-conditioning grilles and lighting fixtures without compromising the minimalist aesthetic.

arthurcasas.com

Designed by Lina Bo Bardi and built between 1957 and 1968, São Paulo’s MASP (Museu de Arte de São Paulo) is an architectural revelation: a huge glass-fronted volume suspended above the street by four stark crimson pillars, a dramatic urban gesture echoing above and below ground. You tend to remember the first time you encounter a building authored by the architect who will go on to shape your passion for the field, and for this humble design writer, that moment came with a visit to that building nearly 20 years ago. For the twenty-something humanities student I was at the time, MASP turned my idea of what architecture could be upside down. Like the modernist architecture master herself, the building resists convention and easy definition.

Lina Bo Bardi: a pioneering modernist

Italian émigré Bo Bardi arrived in Brazil in 1946 and has since become a symbol of Brazilian modernism and cultural identity. Yet her path to recognition was neither straight nor assured. Overlooked for much of her career and posthumously misunderstood, her work was too often diminished by reductive readings of her gender or limited output; she thus remained a marginal figure in modernist architectural history until relatively recently.

The architect, Lina Bo Bardi

Lina Bo Bardi was born in 1904 in Rome, Italy. As a recent graduate from the Rome College of Architecture, she worked with Carlo Pagani and Gio Ponti, and she later served as deputy director of Domus magazine. She married art critic and journalist Pietro Maria Bardi in 1946, and together, they moved to Brazil later that same year, where Bo Bardi set up her architecture practice.

While the majority of her work remained lesser known outside specialist circles for most of the 20th and early 21st centuries, the last decade has seen Bo Bardi take her rightful place in the canon of Brazilian, and indeed world, architecture. Still, a sense of mystery clings to her – a mystique that may well have been of her own design. More than an architect, she was a cultural anthropologist of sorts, intent on channelling what she, the wide-eyed Italian arrival, saw to be the true soul of Brazil, into her work. Her deep fascination with the traditions and crafts of the country’s poorer and remote north-east regions, particularly Bahia, informed her designs in ways that went far beyond form or style.

In 2019, British filmmaker and artist Sir Isaac Julien captured this complexity in Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement, casting mother-and-daughter Brazilian cinema legends Fernanda Montenegro and Fernanda Torres to paint a dual portrait of Bo Bardi. The resulting poetic homage cemented Bo Bardi's revered posthumous status.

Her built legacy may be modest in numbers – just 20 realised projects, all in Brazil – but it brims with vision, audacity, and care. Her drawings, writings, and what can only be described as spirit, continue to reverberate through the culture and architecture of her adopted homeland. In what follows, we explore six of her completed works. Few in number, perhaps, but each one reveals an intensity of thought and a commitment to society, art and architecture that makes it unforgettable.

Lina Bo Bardi: 6 key projects

Casa de Vidro

Where: São Paulo
When: 1951

Having been in Brazil scarcely five years, Bo Bardi’s first major project was a residence for her and her husband, writer and gallerist Pietro Maria Bardi, whom she had followed from Italy after their marriage in 1945. It was built in 1951 on what had been a tea plantation in the once-rainforest-covered hills that surround São Paulo. The architect designed two thin slabs made from reinforced concrete to sit on the slenderest of steel, stilt-like pilotis. These two slabs, forming the floor and the ceiling, were cut into to create a courtyard and then enveloped by a curtain of glass windows, allowing the trees that were planted by Bo Bardi to grow within and around, interacting with the architecture.

The Casa de Vidro or ‘Glass House’ she created was one of the first three residences to be built in the Morumbi area, a neighbourhood that would become a byword for a very Brazilian (and a very exclusive) modernist suburb: set in tropical nature and exuding a deceptive simplicity. The stunning use of glass and the open plan of the house’s layout allows the natural, external landscape to transmute inside, intermarrying with Bo Bardi and her husband’s carefully selected and very eclectic furniture, found objects and works of art.

This apparent simplicity belies an ingenious structural design that was drawn by Italian engineering master Luigi Nervi in 1950 and adapted by Túlio Stucchi in 1951. Bo Bardi’s architecture is so complete at the Casa de Vidro that it almost encapsulates her entire career, her attitude and even her legacy; it was her first attempt to find a Brazilian language for the Italian modernism she had been trained in. It was a very successful first attempt, too. This synthesis of Brazilian landscape and spirit with rationalist, European technique was the architect’s home for 40 years and now houses the Istituto Bardi. The Casa de Vidro is a crystalline distillation of her architectural philosophy.

MASP – São Paulo Museum of Modern Art

Where: São Paulo Museum of Modern Art
When: 1957-1968

The realisation of MASP is remarkable in more ways than one. The fact that Lina Bo and Pietro Maria Bardi, the glamorous new arrivals to Brazil from wartorn Italy, managed to accrue the leverage and influence to get this great modern museum off the ground is a great story in itself. It all began in 1947 when Pietro Maria befriended Assis Chateaubriand, a media magnate and famously controversial figure, helping him amass a vast collection of art which included works by Bosch, Mantegna, Titian and Goya. Pietro Maria took charge to become the museum's first director, and Bo Bardi would design a building fit for Chateaubriand's big ambitions.

Her concept was radical: the museum’s main volume hovers in mid-air, suspended between two colossal concrete beams supported by four pillars, which were then painted a crimson hue that subsequently became like an urban trope for São Paulo. The void beneath creates a public plaza and viewing deck, where a fussy, Belle Époque belvedere once stood. It was a democratic space in the heart of the megalopolis. At the time of construction, it was the largest free-standing span in the world.

Inside, Bo Bardi’s transparent 'crystal easels' displayed artworks without walls, allowing visitors to move freely and break from traditional museum hierarchies. While finding a wonderfully innovative way to display Chateaubriand’s collection of European masters, for MASP’s opening show in 1969, Bo Bardi also curated an exhibition of objects from the Brazilian hinterland entitled 'The Hand of the Brazilian People', challenging perceptions of art. Yet more remarkable is that this all took place despite the military dictatorship that was installed in 1964. Lina’s MASP was a bold act of architectural resistance, and in the process, she created the definitive São Paulo landmark. One that was open, accessible, and unflinchingly modern; a poetic brutalism rooted in social purpose.

Solar do Unhão

Where: Salvador
When: 1959-63

In Salvador da Bahia, Bo Bardi embraced history, treating it not as a barrier but as a canvas. Beginning in 1959, she transformed the colonial-era Solar do Unhão, a crumbling 17th-century sugar mill and residence overlooking the bay that gives Brazil's old, colonial capital its name. Bo Bardi's interventions were delicate yet radical: rather than erase the ruins, she made them a stage for contemporary art and community life, weaving modern architecture into weathered walls and courtyards. Her philosophy of ‘knowing how to live in the ruins’ honoured memory while inviting renewal, argues Brazilian writer and curator Luiza Proença.

Her commitment to Salvador’s cultural fabric extended beyond Solar do Unhão to projects like the Barroquinha Cultural Centre, Casa do Benin, and the historic Ladeira da Misericórdia – a steep street embodying the city’s layered identities. Here, she created a modernist grotto built into the ruins and natural landscape. Bo Bardi’s profound connection to Bahia’s heritage features prominently in Sir Isaac Julien’s 2019 film, Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement, which explores the entwined histories of place, art, and identity.

SESC Pompéia 

Where: São Paulo
When: 1977-1986

In the post-industrial neighbourhood of Pompéia, at a former factory complex, Bo Bardi created a new kind of public architecture, one that Brazil had never before seen: one that was open, adaptable, and deeply human. Commissioned by the progressive social service institution SESC (a very Brazilian peculiarity that has few global equivalents) in the late 1970s, the project transformed the site into a cultural and leisure centre serving the local working and middle-class community.

Rather than erase the industrial past, Bo Bardi embraced it. She preserved the original concrete sheds, inserting libraries, theatres, workshops, and cafés into their raw, robust shells. She designed a meandering indoor stream, whose water trickles over polished stones, referencing Japanese gardens. She built three striking towers of exposed concrete, linked by aerial walkways that seem to float between the silo-like edifices. These contained gymnasiums, changing rooms, and social spaces – all sculpted with playfulness and purpose. For Bo Bardi, this was not just architecture but activism. SESC Pompéia was a 'citadel of freedom' – a place where culture, sport, and everyday life could mix. Decades on, it remains a radical model of inclusive, democratic design.

Teatro Oficina

Where: São Paulo
When: 1984

In her renovation of Teatro Oficina, Bo Bardi turned a burned-out office building on a scrappy plot of land into a space of radical expression. Working with stage actor, director and playwright José Celso Martinez Corrêa (known as Zé Celso), she stripped the building back to its bones and reimagined it as a narrow, high-volume performance arena, part stage, part street, part ritualistic procession. Instead of a traditional proscenium, Bo Bardi inserted a long central runway flanked by steep scaffolding bleachers, allowing actors and audience to share the same raw energy. The roof was partially opened to let in sun and rain, reinforcing the sense that the theatre was alive, porous, and unfinished.

This was theatre as revolution: physical, political, unpredictable. Bo Bardi’s interventions respected the spirit of the space while intensifying its immediacy. Teatro Oficina remains one of her most visceral works, a living monument to Brazilian counterculture and to her enduring belief that architecture should provoke, liberate, and engage. In recent decades, plans for high-rise developments on adjacent land have sparked fierce controversy, seen by many as a direct threat to the theatre’s radical openness and cultural legacy.

Casa Valéria P Cirell

Where: Morumbi, São Paulo
When: 1958

Designed in 1958 for the architect’s friend Valéria P Cirell, the home appears almost hand-sculpted – a rough, geometric form clad in stone, pebbles, and ceramic shards, more organic ruin than polished modernist villa. In contrast to the steel and glass of her earlier Casa de Vidro nearby, this house embraces earthiness and enclosure. Vegetation threads through the walls and up onto green roof terraces that harvest rain and cool the interiors. Inside, two bedrooms, a spartan spiral stair, and a mezzanine are arranged around generous shared spaces that open fully onto the garden and swimming pool. The house, like the neighbourhood of Morumbi in general (that Bo Bardi was so pivotal in defining) is a private sanctuary in the middle of the city. Influenced by Antoni Gaudí and the Iberian roots of Brazilian culture, the house reveals another side of Bo Bardi’s architecture: more tactile, more rooted, but still definitely modern. A hidden gem, it remains one of her most poetic and personal works.

Le Corbusier first went to Rio de Janeiro in 1929, finding the city ‘violent and sublime’. The Swiss-French architect maintained a connection with Brazil for the rest of his life. He travelled there by Zeppelin, drew up disruptive urban plans for Rio and São Paulo (neither realised), worked with modernists Oscar Niemeyer and Lucio Costa, and designed the Maison du Brésil in Paris (making so many changes to Costa's original plans that the Brazilian removed himself from the project). His final commission was to design the French embassy for the new capital of Brasilia, though it was cut short by his death in 1965.

And yet the connection continues. As part of ‘France-Brazil Season 2025’, a year of cultural exchange, the Maison La Roche, which houses the Fondation Le Corbusier, is hosting the first international show by Brazilian exhibition platform Aberto.

Aberto was founded in 2022 by art consultant Filipe Assis, after he learned that the only Niemeyer-designed house in São Paulo had been put up for sale by the family who commissioned it in 1974. Like many modernist houses in Brazil, it was not landmarked or protected, and could easily be torn down. ‘I wanted to try to give a new purpose to these modern houses,’ Assis recalls. ‘I saw that there was a potential to do an art event, to bring awareness.’

He worked with curators Kiki Mazzucchelli and Claudia Moreira Salles (also a designer) to create the first Aberto exhibition at the house, showing national and international artworks in dialogue with Niemeyer's work. It worked: the family has since kept the house as an event space.

The team put together two subsequent editions of Aberto in other hidden architectural gems around São Paulo (including a little-known 1970s brutalist house by Chu Ming Silveira). After attracting more than 20,000 visitors last year, they decided to take the concept to Europe. Assis says, ‘Paris was the main choice because of Le Corbusier's rich relationship with Brazil.’

Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret designed the Maison La Roche in the 1920s for Swiss banker and art collector Raoul La Roche. With its open concept, ribbon windows and a colour palette of 17 gradient shades, it's a striking setting for Aberto4, which brings together contemporary and 20th-century Brazilian artists.

Some of them are big names, such as Beatriz Milhazes, who currently has a solo show at the Guggenheim in New York. Her vibrantly colourful collage at Maison La Roche includes Chanel ribbons and chocolate wrappers, and shares a hallway with a Le Corbusier collage from 1958.

Another important contemporary figure, Luiz Zerbini, welcomes visitors into the entrance hall with a painting of a decrepit modernist building in the Brazilian city of Recife, its coloured façade reminiscent of Le Corbusier's Cité Radieuse. Zerbini's painting is one of several works created for this show. Many are for sale, which helps to finance the project.

Raoul La Roche's private gallery is the largest room in the house, with a dramatic interior ramp and wall-length, sheet-metal lighting that also serves as a sun shield. It displays a selection of artists from Brazil's concretist and neo-concretist movements, which began in the late 1940s. On a table sits one of Lygia Clark's ‘Bichos’, or ‘Critters’, a hinged metal sculpture. Guest curator Lauro Cavalcanti says that, in the same way Le Corbusier believed sculpture should be ‘listened to’, Clark created these works to be unstable, and ‘activated’ by the viewer (though touching is discouraged).

Up the ramp, in the library, hangs an abstract work by Luísa Matsushita, who spent years singing under the name Lovefoxxx with a Brazilian indie band, and now paints full-time. Her painting for Aberto4 has sensuous organic forms and colour blocks in the shades of Maison La Roche. ‘She wanted to do something fluid, in contrast with the rigid architecture of the house,’ says Mazzucchelli.

A nearby wall shows a textured canvas in rich reds and browns by António Tarsis, who grew up poor in a favela in Salvador. Since his teenage years, he's been collecting discarded objects, which he cuts and dyes, then pastes to form grids with colour variations. ‘His work talks about found materials, recycling, his personal story,’ explains Mazzucchelli. ‘It's incredible what you can make with matchboxes.’

Also hanging in the library is a work by Sidival Fila, who creates art with a different kind of found object: antique textiles. Fila is a Franciscan friar from Brazil who lives in Rome. In his spare time, he meticulously sews old fabric, much of it liturgical, to create structural volumes on canvas frames. Until recently under the radar, he is now represented by Paris gallerist Kamel Mennour, and he donates 100 per cent of his proceeds to charity.

In the dining room, sunlight caresses the sinuous lines of Maria Martins' bronze sculpture, inspired by tree roots in the Amazon and lent to the show by a museum in Brazil. Martins was an important early 20th-century artist who lived in Paris for a time as the wife of a Brazilian diplomat. She was also Marcel Duchamps' lover. ‘He was crazy about her,’ Mazzucchelli says.

On the floor above, works by two major Brazilian names, Anna Maria Maiolino (soon to have a show at the Musée Picasso) and Tunga, grace La Roche's surprisingly modest bedroom. Next door in the dressing room, the sculptor Erika Verzutti is showing three stoneware ceramic sculptures cast from jackfruit, with bumpy skin and smooth interiors, inspired by pencils, Barbara Hepworth and architecture. ‘I call them ‘Brasilias,’’ she explains, ‘because they are Niemeyeresque.’ (As for Le Corbusier, Verzutti says that Brazilians have ‘internalised’ him.)

ABERTO4 runs until 8 June, but already, the team is planning upcoming editions. They are considering a 1970s spherical house by architect Eduardo Longo in São Paulo, as well as others in Europe. It's a pretty sure thing the event will be warmly welcomed wherever it goes. As Le Corbusier wrote in a 1962 letter, 'Brazil is one of those hospitable and generous places that one likes to be able to call a friend.'

Aberto4 runs until June 8 2025, aberto.art

Set in São Paulo's Alameda Gabriel Monteiro da Silva road, this Brazil office is an oasis of greenery, raised above ground and wrapped in glass. Designed by architecture studio Perkins & Will for Gabriel Faria Lima Corporate, the building stands out for its lightness and slim, sophisticated character.

Take a tour of this new Brazil office engulfed in greenery

The office building includes two levels above a permeable ground floor, which fluidly connects the open-plan interior with the planted garden exterior. The two upper floors contain workspaces, flooded with natural light through the large glazed sides, yet protected from overheating by a smart louvre system; this not only helps control the internal temperature and glare, but also becomes an important feature for the façade's identity, the Corten steel brise-soleils bring a rhythm to the exterior skin.

Inside, large, flexible, open-plan areas ensure users get uninterrupted views to the outside when they work. The plot, richly planted in leafy species, filters the city's noise and visual busyness, making the experience of working indoors a serene one.

Alongside the defining Corten steel of the brise-soleils, the material palette is completed by the glass and concrete of the main structure, and the soft stone walls that delineate the perimeter of the site, nodding to the local environment.

'Developing a corporate [space] in such an iconic location is a tremendous opportunity to give new meaning and purpose to a corner lot. Our proposal is to integrate the Jardins neighbourhood into the building, as if the development had always existed,' says Douglas Tolaine, creative leader and design director at Perkins & Will São Paulo. 'We seek to combine the comfort, scale and identity of the surrounding homes with a unique design that values nature in an exuberant and singular symbiosis, meeting the needs of a society in constant evolution.'

perkinswill.com

Oscar Niemeyer (1907-2012), who died just a few days before his 105th birthday, had been one of the last living links to the first years of modernist architecture, a social idealist and unabashed aesthete whose career spanned seven decades. Since his first works in the late 1930s, Niemeyer had gone from being Brazil’s most exalted architect to voluntary exile and then back again. He is undoubtedly the world's most influential Brazilian designer, an architect who has never shied away from modernism's political roots, imbuing his sculpturally dramatic schemes with both symbolism and social purpose.

Entering the world of Oscar Niemeyer

Born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, where his practice continues to operate to this day, Niemeyer was prolific. His work, such as the Ravello auditorium in Italy, the Cathedral of Brasilia, the country's National Congress and the National Theatre, his prefabricated schools across Brazil, his complex at Ibirapuera Park in São Paulo and his Cultural Centre at Goiania – awarded Best Public Building in the Wallpaper* Design Awards 2007 – was immensely influential globally, defined 20th century Brazilian architecture, and frequently graced the pages of Wallpaper*.

Although initially he was strongly wedded to the formal simplicity of early modernism, it didn't take long for Niemeyer to find his own path, taking inspiration from the winding coastline, bold colours and sensual delights of his home town of Rio.

The history of an icon

Modern architecture's arrival in Brazil is usually carbon-dated to the Casa Modernista of 1928, built in São Paulo by Russian architect Gregori Warchavchik, who had moved to the country in 1923. In 1929, Le Corbusier undertook a South American lecture tour, returning to Brazil in 1936 to work on the Ministry of Education and Health Building in Rio, in collaboration with Lucio Costa and a team of young architects, including Niemeyer, Carlos Leao, Affonso Reidy, Jorge Moreira and Ernani Vasconcelos.

Widely acclaimed as the fount of the new Brazilian architecture, the building took European modernism as a starting point and presaged the Brazilian genre's move into free-form, concrete-fuelled exoticism. It wasn't to everyone's taste, not least the diehard modernists. The Bauhaus-trained Swiss functionalist Max Bill described Brazil's architecture as having 'thick pilotis, thin pilotis, pilotis of whimsical shapes lacking any structural rhyme or reason, disposed all over the place... works born of a spirit devoid of decency'.

Brazil embraced the new without reservation, remodelling its cities at the expense of many colonial-era structures. Niemeyer's own practice started small. His very first building was completed in 1937, while he was still working in Costa's studio and drawing inspiration from Le Corbusier. Modest in scale, traditionally modern in form, the Obra do Berço nursery is located in Rio's Lagoa, a prime neighbourhood beside the Rodrigo de Freitas lagoon. Le Corbusian in outlook, the nursery building conformed to the Swiss architect's famous five points: elevated up on pilotis, with a free plan, free façade, long runs of windows and a roof terrace.

Initially designed as a medical centre for expectant mothers, it now functions as both residential and day care for young children. The three-storey block is arranged around a north-facing courtyard with a generous roof garden and a large top-floor lounge above consultation rooms, clinics and wards. The west façade is shielded by a system of adjustable brise-soleils, allegedly reinstalled at the young architect's own cost after the initial fixed sun screens were built incorrectly.

It was Niemeyer's turn to travel in 1939, when he and Costa set out to study and work in New York, ostensibly to design the national pavilion for the New York World's Fair of 1939-40, but also to soak up the delirious modernity of the city. While works like the Obra do Berço owed much to the boxy white purism coming out of Europe, the strictly functional approach never gelled with the Brazilian climate and culture, and a more organic, plastic modernism emerged. As the century progressed, the nexus of Brazilian modernism shifted even further from its origins. American modernism had hit the big time as a hyper-efficient tool of capitalism and mass consumption, while the Brazilian model, led by Niemeyer's poetic utopianism, was always more socially considered and less afraid of expression for expression's sake.

Brazil's official ideology was now diametrically opposed to Niemeyer's inherently leftist sympathies. By 1966, his position in Rio had become untenable, and Niemeyer decamped to Paris, setting up a studio on the Champs-Élysées, finding fresh work around Europe, Africa and the Far East, and designing architectural bentwood and leather furniture for the Japanese manufacturer Tendo and for Mobilier International. However, work in Brazil hadn't completely evaporated.

In the late 1960s, Niemeyer undertook a commission for a new hotel in Rio's upscale district of São Conrado. Intent on preserving as much of the open space as possible, the design placed guest rooms in a 108m tall cylindrical tower set atop a concrete base and gardens landscaped by Roberto Burle Marx, an old collaborator of Niemeyer's. The Hotel Nacional opened in 1972 at the height of the military regime, its 510 rooms and convention centre surrounded by a sculptural landscape of concrete and greenery.

At the hotel's peak was an observation deck, she entered beneath a thick canopy of rain-streaked concrete and provided 360-degree views of the city, the sea and the mountains. The prominent site is now on Avenida Niemeyer, a coastal route that snakes its way south of the city past favelas, rocky coastline and the beach, the last forming the raw ingredients of Niemeyer's lifelong visual homage to the elements. The original hotel went bankrupt in 1995, and the building was abandoned, standing empty for many years – a brooding, concrete-topped, dark glass pillar, rising from the jungle at its base. It was not until 2017 that Hotel Nacional reopened, initially run by Mélia Hotels International, and now owned by private investors.

Niemeyer's political allegiances also came to the fore on his return to prominence. In the early 1980s, he was appointed by Leonel Brizola, governor of Rio de Janeiro state, to design a low-cost system for building schools. Brizola, with renowned anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro, proposed the creation of the Integrated Centres for Public Education, or CIEP, intended to bolster the number of schools in Rio's poorest regions, keeping children in education longer and providing facilities where nothing had previously existed.

Nakedly political in its aspirations, the CIEP programme used buildings made up of prefabricated concrete modules, while the teaching programme was specially developed and separate from existing public schools. There were problems; the project fell short of its initial targets, the large number of schools required ate through the budget, and teachers struggled to deal with the expansive classrooms.

Nevertheless, the schools, located close to main roads and boasting distinctive concrete façades, were a statement of intent. Each school used a template of three structures: a main building housing classrooms and a cafeteria, a gymnasium that doubled up as a cultural centre, and a library with additional residential accommodation. The very first school, the CIEP Tancredo Neves in Catete, Rio de Janeiro, is still standing.

Completed in 1983, the building is robust and modest despite its scale. The massive prefabrication job was farmed out to private engineering companies, with up to 300 cubic metres of concrete a day being poured into slabs. At full tilt, a single factory could produce enough parts for one and a half schools a week. Although the CIEP school programme never garnered the global acclaim of his work in Brasilia or his cultural projects in Rio, the mix of concrete and political principles is a core component of Niemeyer's career.

Niemeyer’s role in shaping the new Brazil is well chronicled. Together with Costa, he designed Brasilia, a project which contributed significantly to his expansive opus of over 500 buildings. The extraordinary range of Niemeyer's aesthetic is demonstrated time and time again, with his later works, in particular, showing a strongly symbolic sensibility, long before the fashion for iconic cultural statements gripped the world's cities.

His influence on the country's architecture is still strongly felt, and his longevity means that most of Brazil's practitioners are still subconsciously playing second fiddle. His body of work stands as an enormous achievement, instilling a great sense of pride in all generations of Brazilian architects and forming the bedrock of a design scene with a modern sensibility quite unlike that of any other country.

9 key Niemeyer buildings

Edifício Copan

Where: São Paulo
When: 1966

Niemeyer is known for his sweeping curves and organic shapes, and the large-scale application of this approach on Edifício Copan, a multi-family housing scheme in São Paulo, is emblematic of his work. Impressive yet soft, spanning 32 floors and 1,160 apartments, there is nothing 'boutique' about this project – apart of course from the bespoke architecture, which has made it into history books.

Ibirapuera Auditorium

Where: São Paulo
When: 2002

Oscar Niemeyer and landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx worked together on Ibirapuera Park, one of the most famous green lungs in São Paulo. Niemeyer's contribution includes the Ibirapuera Auditorium, a striking, for its crisp minimalism, volume defined by a single sloped shape, and a vibrant red coloured entrance whose door appears peeled off and floating in the wind above it.

Niterói Contemporary Art Museum

Where: Niterói
When: 1996

The striking Niterói Contemporary Art Museum (Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói – MAC) is one of Niemeyer's later works, completed in 1996. Created with the help of structural engineer Bruno Contarini, the building's main body looks like a flying saucer, hovering high up from the ground and overlooking its coastal site.

Palácio do Planalto

Where: Brasília
When: 1960

If Palácio da Alvorada is where the President of Brazil lives, Palácio do Planalto is where he works. The office building is one of Brasilia's biggest landmarks – for its function as well as its striking modernist looks. It is an official part of the Brasília World Heritage Site, as designated by Unesco in 1987.

Palácio da Alvorada

Where: Brasília
When: 1958

Palácio da Alvorada is the official residence of the Brazilian president. Surrounded by water, it sits on a peninsula by Paranoá Lake. The structure looks low and linear but comprises three levels, and beyond the residential wing, it also includes majestic reception spaces for special events and state entertaining.

National Congress of Brazil

Where: Brasília
When: 1960

The powerful geometries of the National Congress building include a semi-sphere on the left, hosting the seat of the Senate, and a semi-sphere on the right, where the seat of the Chamber of Deputies lies. Two vertical towers between these two elements add drama and monumentality to this modernist design.

Cathedral of Brasília

Where: Brasília
When: completed 1970

The Roman Catholic cathedral of Brazil's newly – at the time – inaugurated capital, Brasilia, features a Niemeyer design, coming to life with some powerful engineering gymnastics by Brazilian structural engineer Joaquim Cardozo. The hyperboloid lines of the structure were constructed from 16 concrete columns.

United Nations Headquarters

Where: New York
When: 1952

Another result of teamwork in Niemeyer's portfolio is the iconic United Nations headquarters in new York. Ten architects and numerous consultants are credited for its inception, which dates back to January 1947. The ten architects were ND Bassov (Soviet Union), Gaston Brunfaut (Belgium), Ernest Cormier (Canada), Charles Le Corbusier (France) Su-Ch’eng Liang (China), Sven Markelius (Sweden), Oscar Niemeyer (Brazil), Howard Robertson (United Kingdom), GA Soilleux (Australia), and Julio Vilamajo (Uruguay).

Church of Saint Francis of Assisi, Pampulha

Where: Belo Horizonte
When: 1943

The mesmerising curves of the Church of Saint Francis of Assisi in Pampulha are a Niemeyer hallmark. Its completion in 1943 was accompanied by an interior mural by Candido Portinari, while the site also features landscaping by Roberto Burle Marx.

Interviewing Oscar Niemeyer at 102, in 2010

Wallpaper*: Your work is always immediately associated with Brazil. How 'Brazilian' do you consider your buildings to be?

Oscar Niemeyer: Modern architecture adopts a more international language, maybe in a more emphatic manner than it has ever occurred in any other period of architecture history. However, Brazilian culture is very powerful and is present in the imagination of the architects of this country. I believe I have not strayed too far from that: in Brasilia, Palácio da Alvorada suggests elements from our past: the horizontal direction of the façade, a large porch, a small church that, at the end of the composition, reminds us of our old farm villas.

W*: We are looking at Brazil at what seems to be a time of optimism, with the Olympics approaching in 2016; what opportunities do you see, what should the country make the most of?

Niemeyer: I believe that the whole country, particularly the civil construction and tourism industries, should make the most of the proximity of the Olympic Games.

W*: Which commission do you consider to be a key project in your career?

Niemeyer: The most important project for my career was the buildings I created for Pampulha, commissioned by Juscelino Kubitschek when he was mayor of Belo Horizonte. In those works, particularly in the small church and Casa do Baile restaurant, the visual vocabulary of my architecture started to define itself. Those large curved coverings started to descend in straight lines, in a surprising manner, thus conferring them with a different character that was justifiable through the issue of their structural forces. In other instances, they unfolded through repeated unpredictable curves created by my architect's imagination; it was on paper, when I sketched those works, that I made my protest against all rationalist, boring, barely inventive architecture, which had quickly spread from the United States to Japan.

W*: Some of your projects, such as the CIEP schools, are not as well-known outside Brazil as larger works like Brasilia or Pampulha. What role have slightly lower-profile projects like these played in your career?

Niemeyer: The CIEP schools in Rio de Janeiro are prefab public schools and, to me, the most important character of those schools is not their architecture; rather, it is the idea championed by my dear friend Darcy Ribeiro that children should stay in school all day long, where they should be provided with sports facilities and libraries, as well as some quiet spaces, crucial for their studies, which are often lacking in their homes. Regarding architecture itself, I sought, even with prefabs, to create structures that would be unique to them, so that they stand out among neighbouring buildings, thus ensuring they show the importance of the venture.

W*: Your office is still working at full speed, and a few members of your family are also architects; how important is it for you that your work and firm are supported and continued by family?

Niemeyer: In my office, I am the only architect responsible for creating initial projects. Two great-grandsons of mine work there; I delegate some project developments to them. They are young architects just starting their careers, which I consider promising.

W*: Are there any Brazilian architects whose work you follow?

Niemeyer: I cannot fail to answer this question: a Brazilian architect I follow is my friend João Filgueiras Lima, aka Lele. His talent and his competence justify my interest. Some of his projects were presented by Nosso Caminho cultural magazine, edited by me and my wife, Vera Niemeyer.

W*: Do you have a daily routine? Do you go to the office every day? What role does architecture play in your life?

Niemeyer: I do have a kind of routine. I wake up fairly early and try to be at the office around 10am. I invariably have scheduled appointments, but I always set aside some time to dedicate to my sketches, which is the essential base to creating my projects. I have lunch at about 12.30pm. During the afternoon, I dedicate a few hours to writing articles and working on Nosso Caminho. At the end of the afternoon, friends come to visit. I go back home and eat dinner around 7pm. Architecture still occupies considerable space in my life.

W*: What would you wish for the future of Brazilian architecture?

Niemeyer: That it always responds, in a creative manner, to technical and social progress. That its professionals rely on their creative intuition without being afraid of anything. Intuition is responsible for unveiling life's secrets, for understanding how human beings, these highly unprotected beings, are able to face their drama.

niemeyer.org.br

Mixing Brazilian brutalism, contemporary sensibilities and views of the native treetop canopy, Arches House is located near Pôr-do-Sol Square in the Alto de Pinheiros neighbourhood of São Paulo. The new home's intriguing geometric roofs are partnered with exposed concrete and structural elements, all of which nod to the building's origins in brutalist architecture. The project was designed and renovated by Arkitito Arquitetura, which stayed true to the building's roots while giving it a refresh following the clients’ 21st-century needs.

Inside Arches House and its Brazilian brutalism roots

The Brazilian architecture firm worked closely with its clients, a couple with two daughters and a dog. The family had recently acquired the house, which was originally designed by Brazilian modernist architecture proponent Ennes Silveira Melo and completed in the 1970s.

‘Considering this was a renovation project of a house originally designed with bold architectural expression – where the exposed structure itself serves as the primary form, closely aligned with Brazilian brutalist architecture of the 1970s – our main inspiration was the original architecture itself,’ say studio co-founders, Chantal Ficarelli and Tito Ficarelli.

‘Our design approach carefully considered the behavioural aspects of contemporary living, adapting spaces across the home's three floors and an additional rooftop level to better accommodate the family’s unique dynamics, lifestyle, and specific needs. Furthermore, we addressed technical aspects essential to modernising the house’s functionality. For the interiors, we aimed to counterbalance brutalism’s inherent austerity by incorporating vibrant colours, bringing warmth, energy, and comfort into the home.’

When the architects first visited the property, it was apparent that the residence would require a new layout, including relocating the kitchen and incorporating more social areas. ‘Our biggest challenge was integrating this new layout and spaces proposed for the house in a way that felt seamless and natural, rather than a renovation,’ said the Ficarellis.

‘We aimed to meet the clients’ needs with grace, beauty, and lightness. Given the original architecture's use of exposed concrete and structural blocks, the project required significant creativity on our part to find pathways and innovative solutions to achieve this harmonious result.’

The new layout includes a TV room with built-in infrastructure for audio and projection equipment, which has been neatly concealed. On the second floor there is a large living room split into two spaces, one for music practice and the other a more cosy intimate space featuring a fireplace and a library, which happens to be the architects’ favourite spot. They told us, ‘Our favourite part is the living room with the fireplace, located right at the front of the house, due to its openness and beautiful view of the treetops. It has become a delightful space for gathering.’

The upper floor offers an office, which is concealed with a wooden sideboard and overlooked by native trees. The materiality of the home reflects its context; it has a natural and organic feel, with timber, warm brown leathers and caramel fabrics, while white walls bring in a fresh and crisp narrative to the interior.

The bedrooms feature a balcony, which hosts a jacuzzi. This external space has been integrated to connect each room, while also providing shade to the living room below. 'We want visitors and residents alike to immediately experience the integration and fluidity between the spaces, as well as the strong visual connection to the outdoors, but most importantly, the vibrant and delightful atmosphere of the house,’ say the architects.

‘We’re very pleased with the contrast achieved between the raw concrete and the carefully introduced colours, both inside and outside. Previously, the structural blocks were painted white, creating a harsh contrast with the exposed concrete. Our proposal was to paint them a very dark green, almost black, allowing the concrete, blocks, and exterior environment to blend seamlessly.’

arkitito.com

Located in Itu, São Paulo, this Brazilian house is inspired by nature, but not in the way you may have anticipated. The country has an incredibly diverse landscape, from soft, white sandy beaches to the dense Amazon rainforest. Yet, Tulio Xenofonte, architect and founder of his namesake studio, was drawn to the black sands of Iceland when designing Casa Turmalina.

‘Before I started the project, the client talked a lot about how important nature and natural elements are in his life, in the trips he enjoys, and in everything around him. Being surrounded by life and nature was what made him buy this 6,000 sq m lot, much of which is preserved native forest,’ Xenofonte says.

Tour Turmalina, a striking Brazilian house

Past trips the client has ventured on include climbing Aconcagua, a mountain in Argentina. His next adventure took him to Iceland. Jumping on this, Xenofonte began to research the island's distinctive nature.

‘One of the places that caught my attention the most was Black Sand Beach, where the slope looks like an immense cliff of black tourmaline’, explains the architect, although the sand and stones are primarily formed from basaltic rock.

‘This is where the whole concept of Casa Turmalina came from, with its wooden slats on the façade, inspired by the golden silicate incrustations that the rock presents, in addition to its concrete stamped with the texture of tourmaline.’

The black tourmaline gemstone became the heart of the design, its powder mixed into the concrete to infuse it with its energy of cleansing and prosperity. Working this into the design allows for the aesthetics of the tourmaline to echo throughout the home.

Inside, the house consists of seven suites to accommodate a family of six, alongside three additional rooms for guests on the ground floor. The communal area boasts an open living room with a terrace and garden, which effortlessly flow into each other. The TV room also extends into the large space and opens up onto the 25m pool that surrounds the house.

The outdoor areas include three additional spaces – a living room, a dining area and a barbecue ‘bar’. Additionally, the home features a fully equipped gym and a spa area with a dedicated massage room, a sauna, which is connected to the pool, a relaxation room and an outdoor hot tub.

Texture plays a pivotal part in the design of this home. From flooring in Spanish porcelain to pool and water features made in Hijau stone from Indonesia, each element embeds the residence further into its surroundings and nature as a whole.

‘In addition to the materials mentioned, the walls of the primary suite are covered in suede, and I used green Guatemala marble for the fireplace in the living room, the doors of the dining room, and the shower and bathtub area in the primary suite,’ says Xenofonte.

These playful textural differences create a cosy atmosphere, and add to the overall sense of an intricate home that responds to its vibrant environment.

tulioxenofonte.com.br

For this week’s installment of The Inside Story, Wallpaper* heads to a tree-lined neighbourhood in São Paulo, Brazil, to a home known as the CMK House. The house, designed by local firm Marina Salles Arquitetura e Interiores, is a masterclass in neoclassical architecture, with original design by Brazilian architect Marcos Tomanik. Salles has added contemporary decor while retaining a warm respect for the initial layout.

The result is tranquil and calming, with the integration of natural textures like linen, raw silk, leather, suede, wood and stone. The aim, however, was to balance this natural, neutral feel with distinctive design; this is not an interior that plays it safe. The entry hall, for instance, features a black-and-white chequered marble floor alongside its sand-toned walls. A suspended ‘Alva AP’ sideboard by Brazilian designers Marcelo Alvarenga and Susana Bastos also makes a statement.

In the living room, the ceramic vaulted ceilings, arched windows and preserved, reclaimed wood floor recall the heritage of the CMK House, but a clean aesthetic persists with the same sandy walls and a curated selection of furniture, artworks and decorative objects.

These include sofas from Dpot, an ‘Sertao’ side table by Gabriela Campos, a ‘Xibô’ lamp by Brazilian designer Sergio Rodrigues, ‘Benjamin’ armchairs (Rodrigues' final creation), a coffee table by Jacqueline Terpins, an ‘Infinito’ armchair by Lia Siqueira for Etel, and a natural-textured rug from Phenicia. Works by artists including Júlio Villani, Vik Muniz, Manabu Mabe and Hilal Sami Hilal adorn the walls, and a grand piano, a focal point for the musically inclined family that lives here, anchors the space.

Other quirky features include a wine cellar with indirect lighting in the dining room and a ceramic mosaic floor in the breakfast room, which is bathed in natural light. The dining table, which is custom-designed by Salles, features a rounded-edge top and is surrounded by ‘Beg’ chairs (also by Rodrigues) and presided over by a ‘Floatation’ pendant light by Ingo Maurer.

The library is a standout space, where existing cabinetry and boiserie panels were retained. Fireside, ‘Stella Alta’ armchairs from Rodrigues are the perfect place to curl up with a book, and we can think of few better places to work than the freijó-veneer desk, designed by Salles, in the adjacent office. Elsewhere, a former painting studio has been transformed into a music studio with navy acoustic linen panels, a striped Kilim rug and a cognac leather sofa.

Classical yet contemporary is not always an easy balance to strike, but Salles achieves it masterfully in this harmonious home, which feels at once like a country estate and a Mediterranean retreat.