Works by Brazilian artists—Ana María Tavares (left), Gabriela Costa (right), and Matias Mesquita (background)—line the entry hall.
Works by Brazilian artists—Ana María Tavares (left), Gabriela Costa (right), and Matias Mesquita (background)—line the entry hall.

This Sustainable Home by Pascali Semerdjian Architects Reflects São Paulo’s Style

The first time Brazilian architect Sarkis Semerdjian met clients Renato Lulia Jacob and Emily Perry, the chemistry between them was obvious. Semerdjian, who is coprincipal with Domingos Pascali of the São Paulo-based firm Pascali Semerdjian Architects, had gone to London in late 2019 to visit friends. Jacob and Perry, originally from Brazil and the U.S., respectively, had lived in England for a decade. When the couple learned of Semerdjian’s visit, they invited him for a meal at their Edwardian townhouse in North London. “Being there with them was like sitting at a bar with old friends,” Semerdjian recalls. From then on—despite the challenges of the project they were about to embark on—the relationship “just flowed.”

Not long before that dinner, around the time Perry became pregnant with her and Jacob’s second daughter, the couple had decided to move to São Paulo, where Jacob had grown up. “There was a kind of gravity pulling us back,” he says. They wanted their daughters to grow up speaking Portuguese and have more time with their Brazilian grandparents. “The window for both,” Perry adds, “was getting smaller.”

They hired Pascali Semerdjian, which had worked with several of Jacob’s friends, and began looking for a suitable apartment in Vila Nova Conceicao, a leafy neighborhood adjacent to São Paulo’s Ibarapuera Park, one of relatively few green spaces in a city famously choked in concrete and asphalt. They were looking for a place they “wouldn’t feel guilty over destroying and rebuilding,” as Jacob puts it, eventually settling on a spacious flat in a nondescript 1990’s building, previously owned by an elderly couple who had moved out five years earlier. Jacob and Perry returned to London, intending to visit São Paulo frequently during the gut renovation of the apartment—a plan the pandemic quickly nixed. “All our process was via Zoom,” Pascali reports, noting that the couple was only able to return to the city shortly before the project’s completion.

In the dining room of a São Paulo apartment renovated by Pascali Semerdjian Architects, Bertjan Pot’s Prop pendant fixtures hang from the exposed original ceiling, which is complemented by walls paneled in board-formed concrete.
In the dining room of a São Paulo apartment renovated by Pascali Semerdjian Architects, Bertjan Pot’s Prop pendant fixtures hang from the exposed original ceiling, which is complemented by walls paneled in board-formed concrete.

Having spent practically their entire adult lives as renters—in Buenos Aires, Lisbon, and London, where they’d moved three times in 10 years—the new homeowners “had a checklist of mistakes we wouldn’t make and things we liked,” Perry says. This included wall space for a growing art collection; public areas that were generous but not palatial; avoidance of leather or synthetic fabrics; and certificates of sustainability for every piece of wood used in the renovation. The goal: “A home that was proud of São Paulo,” a city, she adds ruefully, “that people love to hate.”

Gutting the 4,000-square-foot apartment was relatively easy. Removing the worn-out gypsum ceiling revealed the building’s elegant concrete formwork, which is left exposed in some rooms. Save for an unmovable plumbing pipe—wrapped in rope, it’s now part of the daughters’ playroom—there were few structural constraints, allowing the couple to organize the layout as they saw fit: The public areas and guest suite occupy the southern half of the apartment, while sliding doors allow private circulation between the three family bedrooms and the kitchen, an intimate sanctum within the larger context.

A custom cocktail table joins an Oscar Niemeyer chaise longue, a two-sided Siri bench by Claudia Moreira Salles, and a pair of vintage Svante Skogh armchairs.
A custom cocktail table joins an Oscar Niemeyer chaise longue, a two-sided Siri bench by Claudia Moreira Salles, and a pair of vintage Svante Skogh armchairs.

In particular, the clients worked with the architects to develop social zones that are both deeply Brazilian and vividly cosmopolitan. In the entry hall, a hemicycle of light blazes through a panel of jade-color Pakistani onyx, “like a sunset at the end of the corridor,” Semerdjian suggests. Board-formed concrete panels line the walls, from which a small, brass key bowl projects like a font of holy water: a secular blessing for the domestic space. The panels continue throughout the public areas, curving around the building’s idiosyncratic chamfered corners to create what Pascali describes as “a kind of tunnel” connecting the entry to the dining and living rooms. In the latter, the panels frame a pair of built-in sofas sitting in a large niche that formerly accommodated a fireplace—the type of fanciful gesture toward old-world glamour that Jacob and Perry were looking to avoid.

The residence comes to life in the refinement of its details, a punctilious approach to junctures and joints, to the points where materials meet. In one corner of the kitchen, shelves in washed freijo wood and pale gray quartz meet in a complex concatenation of boxes and panels, as precise as frames crafted for museums. Nearby, a 9-foot-long table, also fashioned from freijo, cantilevers weightlessly from the side of a monolithic concrete island—a cool, calm defiance of physics that recalls São Paulo’s most iconic buildings, which take heavy concrete masses and levitate them above the earth.

Another aspect of the sprawling inland metropolis—its constantly evolving relationship with a tropical environment that it has never fully suppressed—is reenacted on the apartment’s many planted terraces, which encircle it with an exuberant jungle worthy of neighboring Ibarapuera Park. “The garden is chaotic, like a forest,” Semerdjian acknowledges. “Our goal was to really surround the space. The foliage, the concrete—there’s a lot of identity in those elements.” The residence’s tranquility does not so much erase the stimulating excess of the urban environment outside as highlight its intoxicating beauty, the irresistible pull that brought Jacob and Perry and their young daughters here in the first place.

Vintage Erik Buch chairs surround Pascali Semerdjian’s Monica table in the dining room; flooring here and throughout much of the four-bedroom apartment is European oak.
Vintage Erik Buch chairs surround Pascali Semerdjian’s Monica table in the dining room; flooring here and throughout much of the four-bedroom apartment is European oak.
In the dining room, a wall sculpture by Brazilian-Polish artist Franz Krajcberg hangs near the entrance to the kitchen.
In the dining room, a wall sculpture by Brazilian-Polish artist Franz Krajcberg hangs near the entrance to the kitchen.
Served by Alvar Aalto stools, a freijo table cantilevers from the kitchen’s solid concrete island, which was hoisted in through a window.
Served by Alvar Aalto stools, a freijo table cantilevers from the kitchen’s solid concrete island, which was hoisted in through a window.
A built-in brass key bowl protrudes from a niche in the entry hall.
A built-in brass key bowl protrudes from a niche in the entry hall.
Works by Brazilian artists—Ana María Tavares (left), Gabriela Costa (right), and Matias Mesquita (background)—line the entry hall.
Works by Brazilian artists—Ana María Tavares (left), Gabriela Costa (right), and Matias Mesquita (background)—line the entry hall.
A vintage Kurt Østervig lounge chair upholstered in sheepskin sits next to a custom sofa in the living room, where flooring is basalt.
A vintage Kurt Østervig lounge chair upholstered in sheepskin sits next to a custom sofa in the living room, where flooring is basalt.
At the other end of the living-room sofa, backlighting turns a panel of Pakistani onyx into a glowing artwork.
At the other end of the living-room sofa, backlighting turns a panel of Pakistani onyx into a glowing artwork.
An artwork by Katrin Korfmann joins a Zanine Caldas armchair and a rare vintage floor lamp attributed to Hans Bergström in the main bedroom.
An artwork by Katrin Korfmann joins a Zanine Caldas armchair and a rare vintage floor lamp attributed to Hans Bergström in the main bedroom.
Pascali Semerdjian’s Duna sconce, which contains sand and can be rotated like an hourglass, lights a niche in a child’s bedroom.
Pascali Semerdjian’s Duna sconce, which contains sand and can be rotated like an hourglass, lights a niche in a child’s bedroom.
Its closet incorporates custom acrylic storage lit by LEDs.
Its closet incorporates custom acrylic storage lit by LEDs.
Millwork in the playroom is freijo, an abundant South American timber.
Millwork in the playroom is freijo, an abundant South American timber.
A Luiza Ladeira Lavorato photograph hangs above the main bedroom’s brass table lamp and custom desk.
A Luiza Ladeira Lavorato photograph hangs above the main bedroom’s brass table lamp and custom desk.
Its bathroom niche and sink are custom made of copper.
Its bathroom niche and sink are custom made of copper.
Custom fittings enliven the main bathroom, clad entirely in Branca Paraná marble.
Custom fittings enliven the main bathroom, clad entirely in Branca Paraná marble.
PROJECT TEAM
pascali semerdjian architects: ana luisa cunha
rodrigo oliveira paisagismo: landscape consultant
companhia de iluminação; dimlux: lighting consultants
avelart móveis: woodwork
dix arte metal: metalwork
tresuno: concrete work
steel engenharia e construções: general contractor
PRODUCT SOURCES
FROM FRONT
Moooi: pendant fixtures (dining room)
etel: table (dining room), chaise longue (living room), desk chair (main bedroom)
through studio schalling: chairs (dining room, living room), floor lamp (main bedroom)
villa remate: custom sofas (living room)
marset: sconce (entry)
pedras bellas artes: custom cocktail table, basalt flooring (living room)
espasso: bench
: black side tables
vitra: lamp
phenicia concept: rug
lumini: sconces (playroom, child bedroom)
deca: fittings (main bathroom)
artek: stools (kitchen)
Nuura: pendant fixtures
docol: sink fittings
savoir beds: bed (main bedroom)
Bert Frank: table lamp
arte final placas: custom storage (child bedroom)
THROUGHOUT
arteal artefatos de alumínio: windows
oscar ono: wood flooring
suvinil: paint

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