Casa MA: Sunlit Sao Paulo Apartment With Airy Indoor-Outdoor Life
Casa MA stands as a quietly expressive apartment in São Paulo, Brazil, imagined by RUA 141 Arquitetura for urban life lived across levels. The project threads a warm, industrial-inflected interior through living room, kitchen, bedrooms, and a planted rooftop, giving a compact footprint surprising reach. Generous light, carefully chosen materials, and a soft palette ground daily routines in a calm, tactile rhythm.
Morning light filters through sheer curtains and lands on the herringbone floor, catching the grain of wood and the soft weave of a wool throw. A steel stair cuts a dark diagonal through the room, its perforated guardrail tracing shadows across brick and concrete.
Casa MA is a multi-level apartment in São Paulo, Brazil, reworked by RUA 141 Arquitetura around a rich interior palette and a strong sense of urban comfort. The project turns a narrow plan into a sequence of living areas, each anchored by material contrasts and gentle light. Industrial elements share the stage with warm timber, textiles, and planting, so daily life plays out against surfaces that feel both sturdy and relaxed.
Living Room As Spine
The main living room stretches along the facade, with a low concrete-and-wood bench running almost the full length of one wall. Above it, slim steel shelving holds plants, books, and a television, meeting exposed conduit and painted brick with a deliberate, graphic line. A deep sofa faces this composition, layered with neutral cushions and a knitted throw that softens the industrial bones. Color lands in a striped rug and artwork, giving the long room an easy, domestic rhythm.
Steel Stair As Pivot
At the center, the black steel stair becomes both circulation and divider between lounge and kitchen. Perforated metal panels keep the stair visually light while adding texture, allowing light from above to sift through the treads. Underneath, a small bar and storage zone nestle beside the sofa, turning what could be a dead corner into an active part of daily life. Movement up and down the stair reads almost like a changing installation inside the apartment.
Kitchen And Dining Warmth
Past the stair, the kitchen lines one wall in a muted green, with vertical grooves that catch shadows and break down the length of the cabinetry. A concrete backsplash and counter tie back to the living bench, while upper cabinets in natural wood warm the composition. The adjacent dining area gathers around an oval table with a sculpted base, ringed by slender metal chairs upholstered in tan leather. This room opens to a small planted patio, so meals sit close to daylight and greenery.
Quiet Rooms Above
Upstairs, the bedroom pares things back to pale brick, soft textiles, and a long upholstered headboard in gentle green. Artwork rests on a thin wood ledge, keeping the walls calm while still giving the bed a clear focal point. Sheer curtains temper the sun, layering with heavier drapery for privacy and acoustic comfort. In the bathroom, white surfaces, a skylight, and a slim wood slatted shelf keep the small room bright and finely detailed.
Rooftop Garden Life
The stair continues upward to a rooftop terrace surrounded by generous planting, where city towers sit just beyond tall grasses and shrubs. A pale floor and low built-in edges create an outdoor living room, scattered with dark woven loungers and a compact table. Around the corner, an outdoor kitchen with tiled backsplash, wood cabinets, and vivid red stools sits under a rustic timber pergola. Cooking, lounging, and skyline views all collect here, expanding the apartment’s daily life into open air.
By stacking these varied rooms, Casa MA turns its vertical footprint into a layered interior world that still feels coherent. Light, texture, and measured color move from floor to floor, from living room to rooftop, tying industrial hardware and soft furnishings into one continuous story. As the day shifts, so do the tones and shadows, giving the apartment a quiet but persistent sense of change.
Photography by Fran Parente
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