Apartments

In an era where luxury architecture often succumbs to globalized repetition, the new development by Perkins&Will São Paulo in Campo Grande (MS) emerges as a turning point.

Located in São Paulo, the Cartola Apartment was designed to be a cozy urban retreat for a couple residing in the state´s interior but working part of the week in the capital. The 65 m² property underwent extensive renovations, including demolition of masonry, new plumbing and electrical installations, new finishes, lighting, carpentry, and furniture. The project’s premise was to adapt the apartment’s configuration to a more flexible and contemporary lifestyle by integrating the living room and kitchen, increasing the number of bathrooms, and incorporating a remote work desk. Despite its compact size, the apartment’s modular and rational layout allowed these interventions to be accommodated efficiently, ensuring spaces with comfortable proportions and dimensions suitable for the new intended uses.

In the bay of Zihuantanejo, atop a hill that slopes down to Playa la Madera, rises Carpinteros, a residential building inspired by the sails that traverse the coast and the craft of transformation. The project translates the relationship between wind, material, and landscape into architecture that dialogues with the sea, the supporting slope and its context.

The project addresses a challenge shared across Europe: how can we intervene in a complex urban fabric while preserving the histories of its inhabitants and the material traces that shape it? How can one act in an “acupunctural” manner—revitalizing the city without total demolition, without starting from scratch?

We call the Lumen Residential Building the Corners Project because by manipulating and distorting the form in the corner of a building block and by using strategies such as filament, semi-transparency, and multi-layering, we could tame the intense light that exists in the main aspects of the building.