SuperLimão Peels Back a 1970s São Paulo Apartment to Reveal Its Raw Concrete Soul

Higienópolis is one of São Paulo's most established residential neighborhoods, its tree-lined streets flanked by mid-century and modernist apartment blocks that have aged with varying degrees of grace. On Piauí Street, inside a 1970s building overlooking Parque Buenos Aires, SuperLimão Studio took on a renovation that would have been easy to botch: a 350 m² apartment for a couple with three children, full of original concrete structure, solid brick walls, and a floor plan chopped into too many rooms. Rather than gut the place and start over, the architects chose to subtract selectively, peeling back layers of partition walls to let the bones of the building reassert themselves.

What makes the Piauí Apartment worth studying is its stance on preservation as an act of design, not nostalgia. Exposed beams and pipes become graphic elements. Salvaged travertine marble gets pulverized and recast as a granilite floor. Wooden floorboards are restored plank by plank. The result is a home where original fabric and contemporary intervention are nearly impossible to separate, which is exactly the point. Every surface tells you something true about either the building's history or the family's life inside it.

Structure as Ornament

SuperLimão's decision to expose the apartment's concrete beams transforms what most renovations hide behind drywall into the dominant visual rhythm of the public spaces. The raw concrete grid running across the ceiling reads as a kind of structural coffering, giving scale and texture to the open living area. Against this rough overhead plane, backlit timber shelving acts as a warm counterweight, its integrated lighting turning functional storage into an atmospheric screen at dusk.

The contrast is deliberate and disciplined. Concrete stays grey and unfinished. Wood stays warm and precise. Potted plants soften the junction between the two. The architects resist the urge to treat exposure as an aesthetic in itself; instead, every revealed beam earns its place by framing a view, defining a zone, or anchoring a piece of furniture beneath it.

The Park as a Room

Floor-to-ceiling windows along the living and dining areas frame the canopy of Parque Buenos Aires so completely that the treetops feel like wallpaper designed specifically for the apartment. By eliminating the old compartmentalized layout, SuperLimão allowed daylight to travel unobstructed from the window wall deep into the plan. The living room, dining area, and kitchen now share a single horizon line defined by green.

At the dining table, caned chairs sit beneath a large pendant that hangs from the exposed concrete beams, anchoring the seating group without closing it off from the adjacent kitchen island. The spatial sequence from cooking to eating to lounging is legible in a single glance, yet each zone has its own material identity: stainless steel and stone in the kitchen, warm timber and upholstery in the living room, and that continuous canopy of leaves binding them all together.

A Kitchen That Doesn't Apologize

The kitchen is one of the most assertive rooms in the apartment. Teal-painted open shelving lines the back wall, a bold color choice that could have clashed with the raw concrete overhead but instead energizes it. The stainless steel island, retained from a previous renovation, was kept precisely because it already worked: a functional workhorse that didn't need replacing, only recontextualizing. A stone countertop complements it without competing.

The curved timber shelving partition nearby, with its white structural supports and linear lighting, mediates between the kitchen's utilitarian character and the softer living areas beyond. It is a piece of millwork doing the work of a wall without the weight of one. This kind of intelligence, using furniture-scale interventions instead of architectural partitions, recurs throughout the apartment and keeps the plan genuinely flexible rather than merely open.

Private Rooms, Distinct Characters

The private wing houses a master suite and three children's bedrooms, each tailored to its occupant. The bedroom shown here layers painted white brick, sheer curtains, and a parquet floor into a composition that feels restful without being bland. Potted plants appear again, reinforcing the connection to the park outside and grounding the room in something living. The material palette shifts from the public spaces' concrete-and-timber duet to softer textures: fabric, straw, and diffused light.

In the adjacent bathroom, dark tile and a glass shower enclosure create a compressed, deliberate counterpoint to the bedroom's openness. The compact dimensions force precision: every surface, every fixture is considered. The threshold between bedroom and bathroom, visible through an open doorway, stages a tonal shift from light to dark that makes both rooms feel more intentional than they would in isolation.

Sliding Boundaries for a Flexible Life

The home office at one end of the living room exemplifies SuperLimão's approach to flexibility. A black sliding barn door and a steel-framed glass partition allow the workspace to be sealed off for concentration or thrown open for social continuity. The ribbed glass filters visual noise while still admitting light, a calibrated middle ground between privacy and transparency. Behind it, a white brick wall keeps the office atmosphere clean and focused.

On the opposite end of the apartment, a camouflaged door conceals a home theater equipped with automation, surround sound, and a climate-controlled wine cellar. The architects treat these technology-heavy zones not as showcases but as infrastructure, hiding the cables, the data processing center, and the ductwork behind surfaces that read as architecture, not gadgetry. The existing ventilation grilles were repurposed for a new ducted air conditioning system, an elegant refusal to punch new holes in a building that already had the right ones.

Why This Project Matters

The Piauí Apartment is a quiet argument against the reflex to demolish and rebuild. SuperLimão demonstrates that a 1970s São Paulo apartment block contains perfectly good architecture if you know where to look for it. Exposing concrete beams, restoring wooden floors, and grinding salvaged marble into new flooring are not acts of sentiment. They are design decisions that produce richer, more specific interiors than any catalog of new finishes could.

For a family of five that collects art and entertains frequently, the apartment also proves that openness and privacy are not opposites. Sliding doors, camouflaged panels, and furniture-scale partitions let the plan contract and expand throughout the day. The park outside is always present but never imposed. The structural grid overhead is always legible but never dominant. It is a renovation that respects its host building enough to let its character lead, while still making every room unmistakably contemporary.

Piauí Apartment by SuperLimão Studio. Located in Higienópolis, São Paulo, Brazil. 350 m². Completed 2022. Photography by Maíra Acayaba.

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