Signature · Architecture · São Paulo
JNA Arquitetos
Four decades enabling development in the dense city: the firm that solves the difficult plot and still delivers one family per floor.
Who it is
JNA Arquitetos was founded in 1985 by architect Jorge Munif Abussamra, a graduate of FAU Mackenzie with a master’s degree in Architecture, who remains the firm’s lead architect. The firm keeps its own team of architects and works on corporate, residential and institutional buildings, residences, mixed use, restaurants and retail, besides a division dedicated to retrofit.
The house is affiliated with AsBEA, a member of Secovi and certified ISO 9001/2015 — an unusual combination for an authorial firm and a sign of a process-organised operation. It is headquartered in Jardim Paulista, on Avenida Nove de Julho, inside the Edifício Torre DGN 360, itself a design by the firm.
The firm’s discourse is explicit about the role it has chosen: to follow the real estate market closely and take on the architect’s role in enabling the development, in direct partnership with the developer. That is why JNA’s output appears so frequently on tight plots in consolidated neighbourhoods — Itaim Bibi, Vila Mariana, Paraíso, Pinheiros, Higienópolis and Jardim Paulista.
Language
- Style: urban building architecture, sober and contemporary, resolved from the constraints of the plot. There is no façade mannerism: the design decision happens in the siting and the floor plan.
- Signature: mastery of the one apartment per floor typology on a narrow plot — the solution that turns a house-sized lot into a large-metreage building without resorting to a club’s worth of leisure amenities.
- Scale: completed works ranging from just over two thousand square metres to twelve thousand, which shows a house equally comfortable in boutique and corporate-tower scale.
Landmark works
- Soul Jardins, in Jardim Paulista — a single tower, one apartment per floor, for Constrac.
- The Class Higienópolis, in Higienópolis — eleven units on one floor per family, for Epson Engenharia.
- Edifício Torre DGN 360, on Avenida Nove de Julho — the firm’s own headquarters.
- Edifício Rebouças Corporate, in Pinheiros.
- Art On, in Moema.
- Edifício Praça da Vila, in Vila Nova Conceição.
- Edifício Itahy, on Rua Renato Paes de Barros, Itaim Bibi.
- Edifício Me We Jardins, on Rua Guarará, Jardim Paulista.
- Edifício Pátio Pinheiros and Edifício Platinum Tower II.
