Bela Cintra 1235 by Triptyque

Car­olina Bueno from Trip­tyque sent me images and infor­ma­tion about another one of their amaz­ing projects, an apart­ment built for Hous­sein Jarouche in São Paulo, Brazil. The kitchen and bath­room are my favourites, but the rest is just as spec­tac­u­lar. Here’s what the archi­tects had to say about this project: (more images and details after the break)

Dominique Gonzales-Foerster defined the trop­i­cal iden­tity as “some­thing organic, intense, sen­so­r­ial, veg­e­tal, pul­sat­ing, imma­ture, out of con­trol”. These con­cepts guided the project for this apart­ment. This project embod­ies the idea of global design — it’s a com­pletely artis­tic project. A con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous and sin­gu­lar archi­tec­tural plan is estab­lished from the lay­out to the faucets. The 300 square feet apart­ment was planned as a great gallery with aligned rooms with­out an estab­lished func­tion. The goal was to stim­u­late unex­pected occu­pa­tions and give a cer­tain gra­tu­ité to the spaces. The main con­cept was to work the space as whole unit, divided in smaller rooms.

“The first step was to clear the space and observe the poten­tials. The sec­ond step was to estab­lish a new hier­ar­chy that priv­i­leges the con­ti­nu­ity of spaces. The third, to search and cre­ate a lan­guage of our own”, say the Trip­tyques. The great­est chal­lenge to the archi­tects was to make sure that this con­ti­nu­ity was obtained with­out inter­fer­ing in the rich­ness of inter­nal spaces. The apart­ment struc­ture was opened to its max­i­mum in order to clear the plan, where a dia­log between the book­case, the kitchen and the gal­leries is set. The gallery is marked by inte­grated essen­tial ele­ments, such as clos­ets, bath­tub, bed, kitchen, etc. — all of them treated in a min­i­mal­ist way — rough con­crete, demo­li­tion wooden floors, stain­less steel, white walls, etc. — giving the fur­ni­ture and art pieces space to be moved around.

A mon­u­men­tal struc­ture (the book­case) embraces the tech­ni­cal core of the build­ing (ele­va­tors and stairs). It presents itself in every room and defines the whole project: through the book­case is made the entrance to the apart­ment, like walk­ing into a cave, through the dark towards the light.

The kitchen is a great con­crete stone — from where fire arises — that stands in the cen­ter of the project. It is the ele­ment of encoun­ter­ing and artic­u­la­tion and is placed in the cen­tral posi­tion, speak­ing directly to the great struc­ture (the bookcase).

The fur­ni­ture – pieces of inter­na­tional design col­lec­tions — was cho­sen with the client’s par­tic­i­pa­tion. The choice was leaded by the con­fig­u­ra­tion of spaces, con­sid­er­ing as pri­or­ity the rooms’ ver­sa­til­ity and the pos­si­bil­ity of even­tual lay­out changes. White is the main color used. In the gallery, the white is accom­pa­nied by the nat­ural col­ors of the other mate­ri­als — con­crete, wood and stain­less steel — and in the bed­room it is side by side with dark – grey ele­ments, giv­ing it a strong and inti­mate feel.

Inside, strong ele­ments are con­fronted, result­ing in a poetic con­ver­sa­tion. The use of wooden floors, for exam­ple, is very expres­sive: the treated demo­li­tion wood and its irreg­u­lar pieces jux­ta­poses with the white lac­quered book­case. The arti­fi­cial makes visual con­trast with the rough. In the same way, the kitchen’s con­crete speaks to the stain­less steel from the draw­ers and doors. There­fore, the apart­ment offers a great vari­ety of points of view, sequences, acci­dents and move­ments. The result is extra­or­di­nary and sur­pris­ing – the visual rela­tion cre­ated with the loose vol­umes and the organic omnipres­ence of the Treme-Treme leads to a unique archi­tec­tural experience.