Construction is well under way for the 58,000 sq. meter office tower and the 2,000 sq. meter mixed-use building on Faria Lima Avenue in São Paulo. The buildings are designed to create an urban space with the two buildings facing and defining the public plaza. The office tower will be all-glass façade with unique geometry of a simple but compelling shape.
The typical buildings along Faria Lima Avenue are rectangular blocks turning flat façade towards the street. To break this repetitive monotony we positioned the street facades angular to the avenue and combine the pointy geometry with an efficient rectangular floor plan behind. The angular facades create two small entry plazas along the avenue and the overall building shape addresses the unusually large plaza to the south and the drop-off to the north.
As the building rises the floor plan continuously changes from a six-sided base to a rectangular plan at the top of parapet while keeping an almost uniform floor plate of 2000 sq. meters as the program required. The north and south facades rise perpendicular from the ground while the facades of the diagonal ends at the east and west are tilting in and tilting out to mediate between the two geometries. The dynamic shape of the inclined facades gives the tower more presence along Faria Lima and stresses the unique quality even more. To emphasize the pristine geometry of the tower as a large monolithic glass crystal, the crisp edges of the tower are lined with metal bands.