RR Apartment by Pascali Semerdjian Architects
RR Apartment is an inspiring modern home in Sao Paulo, Brazil, designed by Pascali Semerdjian Architects for a childless couple in 2021.
Description
Located in the Barra Funda neighborhood in São Paulo, Apartment RR was designed for a couple without children. Initially we sought to meet the demands of the proposed program and from there optimize the solutions as we saw fit.
The project has some special elements that happened along its development and after the conclusion of the plan. We marked some of these elements with curves, such as the barbecue grill balcony in wood on the internal side and white on the living room side, as if we had a core and a shell. This same concept appears in a different way in the cabinets that form a volume next to the kitchen: a wooden corner emerges from two white curves in a plane. Without curves, but with the same concept of the shell, we have a wooden plane above the kitchen that projects indirect light into the room and serves as support and shelves.
Another request from the client was that we employ color in the project in some unusual way. So we made the ceiling of the couple’s bathroom in a pink tone and with a subtle curvature in its edges. Using pink grout, we left an impression that the paint of the ceiling tile runs and fills the spaces between the tiles.
There was an initial incompatibility between the information provided by the construction company and what was actually built in the apartment. With the start of the project before the delivery of the works, we had to redo parts of the project to adapt it to the reality of the site. These changes had to be re-approved by the client, which always ends up generating some frustration, since the first solution usually creates an initial passion.
In general, the apartment was built in a very conventional way with masonry walls, plaster ceiling, etc. But here we used porcelain tile flooring in all spaces, not at the client’s request, but by “elimination”. The client’s prerequisites for this floor – cold, good cost benefit, stable and without possibility of cracks in the future and easy to clean and maintain – led us to porcelain tiles. The cabinetry is all Freijó and white goffered paint.
The floor plan of the apartment did not allow us to change much, especially because of structural interferences. So its main configuration, such as the location of the rooms, was maintained. We changed the circulation and accesses to the rooms and integrated the kitchen to the living room, which was a direct request from the client. The veranda was also integrated to the living room through its glazing, but visually “separated” through its curved shape.
Photography by Ricardo Bassetti
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- by Matt Watts
