Estúdio Minke Strips a 1940s Higienópolis Apartment Back to Its Concrete Bones and Plants It Like a Village House

Higienópolis is one of São Paulo's most established neighborhoods, a district of mid-century apartment blocks with plans built around a strict separation of family, service and guests. Estúdio Minke took one of those 1940s units, 113 m² of corridors and closed rooms, and turned it into a single integrated home for a couple, Lucas and Hilário, and their two cats. The project is called Apê Tamarindo, and the clients asked for a place tied to their own history rather than a catalogue interior.

Plenty of São Paulo renovations expose concrete, so that is not what makes this one interesting. What interests us is how the studio uses that raw structure as a neutral backdrop for something warmer and more specific: reclaimed demolition brick, custom metalwork, timber, a lot of plants, and a palette of earth tones and greens. The stated goal is the atmosphere of a casa de vila, the modest row house of Brazilian cities, recreated several floors up inside a historic apartment block. Whether that works depends less on any single material and more on how the plan was opened.

Removing the Corridor, Keeping the Frame

The key move is subtraction. The original layout split the apartment into small rooms along a corridor, the standard arrangement of its era. Minke removed those partitions and left the concrete columns standing free in the new open room. In the living area, a column sits beside the parquet floor and a timber-clad counter, and it reads as part of the room rather than an obstacle to it.

The long view from the dining table, past the island and into the brick-backed kitchen, shows how much the apartment gained. Daylight from the steel-framed windows now reaches across the full depth of the plan instead of stopping at a bedroom door. For a 113 m² unit, that change in perceived size matters more than any finish.

Industrial Language, Domestic Temperature

The kitchen is where the material strategy is clearest. Reclaimed brick forms the backsplash, the island is clad in timber with a terrazzo top, and a steel extractor hood hangs beside raw concrete columns. Each surface comes from a different register: salvaged, crafted, industrial and structural. They hold together because none of them is polished into a showpiece.

Overhead, the exposed concrete ceiling carries lighting on a cable tray, a detail from office fit-outs that here admits the services are part of the building. Below it, a rust-colored sectional and an oval glass coffee table bring the temperature back up. Minke calls this an industrial language, but the furniture and textiles keep the room from becoming a loft cliché.

A Village House in the Canopy

The casa de vila idea comes through most strongly in the planting. A hanging timber shelf of trailing vines frames a sitting corner, and a green wall and fluted media cabinet finish the composition. This works more like architecture than decoration: the vines lower the visual ceiling and create a sense of enclosure in a room that no longer has walls.

The window nook makes the point plainly. Indoor vines sit in front of the tree canopy outside, with distant towers beyond. You are clearly in a vertical city, yet the foreground is all leaves. That layering is the nearest an apartment can get to the porch of a row house, and it is the most persuasive moment in the project.

Color, Screens and the Private Rooms

An integrated plan still needs privacy, and Minke handles it with color and filtered thresholds rather than solid walls. A green door sets the bedroom zone apart from the dining area and its white bookshelf wall. The bathroom sits behind sage-green framed sliding doors with reeded glass, which let light through and blur the view. At the threshold, wood parquet changes to terracotta tile.

In the bedroom, a cobogó block half wall stands behind a slatted timber bed. The cobogó is a distinctly Brazilian element, a perforated block developed for ventilation and shade, and using it indoors as a partial screen connects the interior to the brasilidade the architects describe. It is a more precise reference than a generic tropical mood, and the large black and white botanical prints echo the planting in the public rooms.

Plans and Drawings

Comparing the two plans shows the extent of the renovation. The demolition drawing marks in red the walls separating the old bedrooms, corridor, kitchen and service area from the living room, which is the full logic of the 1940s apartment taken apart. The furniture layout replaces it with a master suite, a TV room, a dining table and living area, all organized around a central kitchen island, with a planted veranda at the edge.

The island is the hinge of the new plan. Moving the kitchen from the service wing to the center reverses the social hierarchy of the original apartment, where cooking was hidden from guests. This is a spatial decision as much as an aesthetic one.

Why This Project Matters

São Paulo has a large stock of mid-century apartments whose plans no longer fit the households living in them. Apê Tamarindo offers a sensible model: keep the structure, remove the partitions that encoded old domestic hierarchies, and rely on salvaged and crafted materials instead of new, standardized finishes. Reusing demolition brick and exposing the original frame are restrained choices, and they suit a neighborhood whose value lies in its existing buildings.

The broader lesson is about character. Many open-plan renovations end up generic because removing walls also removes identity. Estúdio Minke puts identity back through planting, color thresholds, the cobogó screen and the client's own history, and the result feels lived in rather than staged. For a 113 m² interior, that is a meaningful achievement.

Tamarindo Apartment (Apê Tamarindo) by Estúdio Minke, Higienópolis, São Paulo, Brazil. Area: 113 m². Completed: 2026. Photography by Maura Mello.

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