Lucas Jimeno Dualde Turns a Higienópolis Apartment into a Domestic Temple of Pink Plaster and Walnut

Higienópolis is one of São Paulo's most architecturally literate neighborhoods, a district of mid-century apartment blocks where modernism arrived early and stayed. In one of these buildings, Lucas Jimeno Dualde has renovated a 280 m² apartment that the architect describes as something close to a domestic temple. The phrase sounds grand, but the project earns it through subtraction rather than spectacle. Visual and material noise has been removed, and what remains is organized around the body, light, color and a carefully chosen population of objects.

What we find interesting here is how much work color is asked to do. Colors Apartment does not use pink as a finish applied to walls. It uses pink plaster as a spatial instrument: it marks columns, wraps the central circulation, colors pivot doors and tells you where the apartment's spine runs. Around that core sit walnut, grey stone, blue-grey tile and sheer curtains, a restrained palette that lets the pink read as architecture. The result is a mid-century flat that feels newly calibrated without erasing its age.

Pink Plaster as Architecture, Not Decoration

The rough pink column is the project's signature. Its hand-worked plaster surface keeps the trace of the trowel, so the structure reads as something made rather than specified. Next to it, flush pink doors with round wooden pulls disappear into the partition walls, so the whole surface becomes one continuous colored plane.

This is a smart way to deal with an existing building. Mid-century apartments often have columns and structural walls that land awkwardly in a new plan. Dualde accepts them and paints them. You stop treating the column as an obstruction and start reading it as a marker, almost a sculpture, around which the rooms arrange themselves. In the lounge corner, the same pink sits beside a cane-panelled cabinet and a low timber shelf. Warm late light does the rest.

A Living Room in Mustard, Walnut and Moving Curtains

The living room is built from a few strong, tactile elements: a mustard velvet L-shaped sofa, a round walnut coffee table and a jute rug. Sheer linen curtains filter the daylight and, in one of the better details of the photography, move with the breeze. That movement matters. In a frugal interior, the shifting light and soft textiles keep the space alive without adding more things.

Objects carry real weight here. A carved totem figure stands behind the sofa, a small bronze figure sits on a wall shelf, and a woven textile hangs above. These pieces are not styling props scattered for the camera. They are placed with the restraint of a gallery hang, which is where the temple analogy starts to make sense: each object gets its own space and a clear sightline.

Dining Room and the Indoor Garden

The dining area sits beside a stone-floored alcove filled with potted palms and ferns, part of the landscaping work credited to Gabriela Chow. The move is simple and effective. Instead of a balcony treated as leftover space, the planted zone becomes a green room you look into from the table, framed by the pink column and lit through sheer curtains.

A floating timber sideboard holds small carved heads, a figure and stone objects, with a framed portrait leaning on a plaster ledge. Lifting the sideboard off the floor keeps the timber floor running uninterrupted, a small gesture that helps a dense collection feel light. Seen through a pink doorway, the line of plants reads almost like a procession, which is fitting for a home that borrows the language of ritual.

Pivot Doors into a Walnut and Blue-Grey Kitchen

The kitchen is entered through pink pivot doors with oval wooden handles, which are probably the most theatrical element in the apartment. Open, they reveal walnut cabinets, a grey stone backsplash and blue-grey tiled base units and floors. Closed, they return the kitchen to the pink core. The door works as a hinge between two color worlds, and this is where the apartment's palette is at its most deliberate.

The galley layout is pragmatic, lit from a side window, with a blue tile island and two wooden stools for informal use. Nothing here tries to be a showpiece kitchen. Its quality comes from the contrast of warm walnut against cool tile and stone, which keeps a working room in the same register as the living spaces.

Corridors as Thresholds

Long corridors are the weak point of many mid-century apartment plans. Dualde treats them as calm transitional spaces instead of trying to hide them. White wardrobe doors with wooden handles line one hallway and turn the walls into storage, while a lounge chair in front of a sheer curtain closes the view at the end. Another corridor uses flush plaster doors and round brass knobs, lit by low daylight across the timber floor.

The effect is a gradient. You pass from the saturated pink core into quieter, paler passages before reaching the private rooms. It is a basic sequence, but it is executed with enough discipline that moving through the apartment feels considered rather than incidental.

Bedrooms Held in Filtered Light

The bedrooms are the most subdued rooms in the project. A low bed, a conical pendant and a wooden lounge chair sit beside sheer curtains that soften the afternoon sun. In another room, a quilted scalloped bedspread and a small framed painting provide the only real pattern. Even the roller shutter is left visible, a sign that the existing building is accepted rather than disguised.

The wall-mounted timber bedside shelf is a good example of the apartment's approach: one piece of wood, one small painting, one sliver of window light across the plaster. You could call it minimalism, but it is warmer than that word usually suggests. The rooms are sparse, though never cold.

Stone Bathrooms and Small Altars

Stone becomes the main material in the bathrooms. A long stone vanity with an integrated sink sits over timber cabinets beneath a wide mirror and a louvred window. A second vanity pairs a wood-framed mirror with a wall-mounted tap and a small alabaster sconce that glows in the evening. In a corner niche, a stone basin with a brass tap is set into plaster beside a small painting and a vase of flowers. It is a washbasin that behaves like a shrine.

That impulse repeats across the apartment in small compositions: dark wooden vessels and a chrysanthemum on a grey marble ledge, or a single smooth stone on a plaster shelf beneath a framed artwork in raking light. These vignettes are where the temple idea is most literal. They also show the risk of the approach, because an interior this dependent on curated objects asks a lot of whoever lives in it. Here, at least, the discipline holds.

Plans and Drawings

The floor plan confirms what the photographs suggest. Bedrooms, bathrooms, the kitchen and a living terrace are arranged around a central circulation space, and the drawing highlights that space in pink. The color in the built work is the plan made visible. The section shows the wall of doors as a continuous pink element along a narrow strip of rooms, with the bathroom vanity at one end.

The interior elevation of the living and dining zone is equally revealing. A media wall with cabinets runs above the sofa, windows rendered in blue sit behind it, and the dining area faces the planted glazing. These drawings show that the apartment's atmosphere comes from a clear set of decisions about walls, openings and built-in furniture, not from decoration added afterward.

Why This Project Matters

São Paulo has a large stock of mid-century apartments, and many renovations of them follow one of two scripts: strip everything back to white boxes or turn the flat into a showroom of Brazilian modernist furniture. Colors Apartment takes a third path. It uses one strong color to reorganize the plan, keeps the material palette tight, and lets light and objects carry the atmosphere. This approach can be repeated in other existing buildings without imitating this particular result.

The bigger lesson concerns frugality. Dualde's interior is spare, but it is not impoverished. Hand-finished plaster, walnut, stone and filtered daylight provide richness without clutter. We think this is a useful model for residential renovation: a home that feels made with care because of what was removed and where the remaining attention went.

Colors Apartment by Lucas Jimeno Dualde, Higienópolis, São Paulo, Brazil. Area: 280 m². Completed: 2025. Photographs: Andre Klotz.

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