Sub Estúdio Splits a São Paulo Apartment into Wet and Dry Zones Behind Steel and Glass Partitions

Apartment renovations in São Paulo usually follow one script: knock down a wall, open up the living room, call it done. Sub Estúdio took a more structural view of the Girassol Apartment, completed in 2015. The office did not just enlarge rooms. It discarded the existing floor plan and sorted the whole flat into two zones, one wet and one dry, so that how water moves through the home decides where everything else goes.

That sounds like a technical decision, and it is. What makes it worth your attention is how far the studio carries it into the finishes. White tile, copper pipe and hexagonal flooring mark the wet zone. Herringbone parquet, teak veneer and exposed concrete mark the dry one. Black steel frames with glass sit between them as hinges. You can read the logic of the plan just by looking at the floor under your feet.

The Kitchen as the Wet Zone's Public Face

The kitchen is where the two zones meet most visibly. Seen from the hallway, parquet gives way to hexagonal tile at a clean line, and the room changes character on the spot. Amber glass pendants hang low over a timber dining table with cane-back chairs, so the space reads as a place to eat rather than a service room tucked out of sight.

We like the restraint in the material palette here. Timber cabinets, black counters and white subway tile repeat across every surface, and the black steel cabinet frames tie the kitchen to the partitions elsewhere in the flat. Nothing is there just for show. The warmth comes from the wood and the amber light, not from added decoration.

A Bathroom That Shows Its Plumbing

Most renovations hide their pipes. Here the copper is the main event. Exposed supply lines run across glossy white tile to a freestanding clawfoot tub set under a bright window, and the same copper turns up in the basin taps and the towel warmer. If the wet zone is the organizing idea of the plan, this is where the studio states it outright.

The choice is practical as much as aesthetic. Surface-mounted plumbing is easier to reach and repair, and in an older building it avoids chasing new channels into the walls. The risk is a nostalgic, catalogue-bathroom look, but the bareness of the tile and the plain lines of the fixtures keep it on the right side of that line.

Small Room, Careful Light

The basin corner shows how much the studio gets out of limited daylight. A high glass-block window and a small clerestory bring light in above eye level, preserving privacy, and a scalloped, etched mirror catches that light and spreads it across the white tile. A frosted steel-framed door finishes the corner, letting light pass into the room without giving up the enclosure a bathroom needs.

Steel and Glass as the Hinge Between Zones

The black steel-framed glass partition is the most quotable element in the project, and it deserves the attention. It separates the bedroom from a teak-veneer wardrobe wall while keeping sight lines and daylight continuous. The herringbone floor and the exposed concrete ceiling run straight through, so the partition reads as a thin screen rather than a wall.

Steel-and-glass partitions have become a fixture of urban apartment renovations, and they often feel added on. Here they make sense because they repeat the kitchen cabinet frames and the bathroom door. The same detail recurs throughout the home, which keeps it from being a one-off flourish.

A Bedroom Stripped Back to Concrete and Timber

In the bedroom, removing finishes becomes the finish. The concrete ceiling is left raw, with track lights mounted directly on it, and the bed sits on a timber platform beside a long wooden dresser. A heavy dark curtain handles light control, which is a simpler and more flexible answer than built-in blinds.

Plants, linen and a sheepskin rug do the softening. You could argue the room relies on styling more than the rest of the flat does, but the bones (concrete above, wood below) are strong enough to take any furniture.

Living Room Built Around Storage

The dry zone ends in the living room, organized around a concrete shelving unit and built-in wood drawers. Storage here is architecture, not furniture: it frames the room and frees the floor for a sofa facing a wide window lined with potted plants. The herringbone parquet links this space back to the bedroom and hallway, confirming that everything on this side of the plan belongs to one family of materials.

Plans and Drawings

Comparing the drawings tells the whole story. The existing layout, with red lines marking the old door swings and partitions among grey walls and black columns, shows a flat divided into small, conventional rooms. The new plan reorganizes this compact rectangle into a clear sequence of entrance, living room, kitchen, laundry, bathroom, closet and bedroom, with the wet functions grouped together.

The isometric drawing makes the zoning easiest to understand. With the walls cut away, the kitchen table, shelving, bathroom and bedroom read as separate volumes set within one continuous shell. The columns stay where they were, but the plan is now organized around use rather than leftover partitions.

Why This Project Matters

The Girassol Apartment demonstrates that a renovation concept can be both functional and visible. Sorting a plan into wet and dry areas is a plumber's logic, but Sub Estúdio turned it into a material system you can see, from tile to parquet, from copper to teak. That clarity is what separates this flat from the many open-plan makeovers that share its steel partitions and raw ceilings.

For anyone working with São Paulo's older apartment stock, the lesson is to begin with services and structure before thinking about style. Keep the columns, consolidate the water, expose what can be exposed, and allow a short list of materials (steel, concrete, timber, glass) to carry the design. The result is easier to maintain, easier to understand, and more pleasant to live in.

Girassol Apartment by Sub Estúdio, São Paulo, Brazil, 2015. Photography by Tomás Cytrynowicz.

About the Studio

Share Your Own Work on uni.xyz

If projects like this are the kind of work you want to make, uni.xyz is a place to publish your own, find collaborators, and enter design competitions.