Alphaville Residencial 1

History

Alphaville began in 1971, in a conversation. Engineer Célio Sampaio de Freitas approached Renato de Albuquerque to discuss an immense tract of land on the banks of the new Rodovia Castello Brancoi, in Baruerii, belonging to the heirs of Conde Álvares Penteado — 23 kilometres from Praça da Sé, but only 14 from Avenida Brigadeiro Faria Limai, which was already emerging as the city’s new business centre. The idea was a business centre that would draw industry and offices out of the capital. In September 1973, with part of Fazenda Tamboré purchased and the peaceful departure of its occupants negotiated, Albuquerque and his partner Yojiro Takaoka, of Albuquerque Takaokai, began building the neighbourhood.

The turning point came from Hewlett-Packard. The company’s property director proposed shifting the focus from heavy industry to warehouses and offices — and including housing so that executives would not need to travel to São Paulo every day. That is how, in 1975, Alphaville’s first residential enclave was born. It was later realised that housing yielded more than production, and the developments began to be launched numbered, from zero to twelve, skipping number seven. Residencial 1 is the founder of the series — and the model that Tamboré 1i, Alphaville Residencial 10i and more than a hundred gated developments across the country later copied.

The residents’ association marks the birth of the residential enclave in 1979, the year it was formally established; the neighbourhood’s history records the first residential enclave in 1975. Both dates coexist in the public material, and this entry records both.

• Concept: the gated development of single-family houses as an answer to the city — the house with a garden, work five minutes away and the gatehouse in place of the street.
• Trivia: Renato de Albuquerque, one of the two masterminds and founders of Alphaville, still lives in Residencial 1 today, according to the residents’ association itself. The residential enclave maintains its own highly equipped ambulance, staffed with emergency-trained nurses, seven days a week and 24 hours a day — over 350 call-outs, four resuscitations and 65 hospital transfers in a single year. And residents have exclusive internal access to Alphaville Tênis Clubei, the neighbourhood’s oldest social club, with facial-recognition entry, without passing through the gatehouse.

Architecture and aesthetics

In a housing development, the design is not in the façade — it is in the rules. Alphaville was born with an occupancy code that was short and strict: prefabricated houses forbidden, a maximum of 22 houses per block, a mandatory four-metre front setback for the garden, and it was the residents’ association, not the city hall, that issued the occupancy permit. It is this code, not a style, that gives Residencial 1 its unity fifty years on: the tree-lined avenue, the continuous landscaped setback, the low density.

The houses are unrestricted in design, and the repertoire spans five decades, from the first crop of the 1970s — when living in Alphaville was an experiment — to contemporary residences of more than a thousand built square metres that now appear in architecture magazines. The common heart of the enclave is Praça São Pedro, where the residential development’s leisure, sport and convenience retail are concentrated, surrounded by greenery.

Aesthetics and scarcity

Technical specifications

• Towers and units: gated development of single-family houses — one residence per lot, no towers.
• Areas: each residence is its own owner’s design; there is no standard floor plan.
• Parking: determined by each house’s own design.
• Structural highlights: Praça São Pedro as the hub for leisure, sport and convenience, with a mini-market and a 24-hour shop · own ambulance with specialised nurses, 7 days a week and 24 hours a day · exclusive internal access to Alphaville Tênis Clubei with facial recognition · community vegetable garden · the residential development closest to the access points for the Castello Brancoi, Rodoaneli, Anhanguera and Bandeirantesi highways.
• Registry and parameters: single-family residential development in the municipality of Baruerii, Alphavillei district · managed by the Associação Residencial Alphaville 1, headquartered at Alameda Rio Negro, 1.500 · elected executive board, board of directors and fiscal council, with two-year terms · Alameda Espanha, an internal road of the residential development, has its official postal district registered as “Alphaville Residencial Um” (CEP 06474-125) · registry jurisdiction of Barueri.

Leisure and facilities

• Beach tennis courts
• Multi-sport court
• Five-a-side football pitch
• Walking track
• Boulevard, a space for gatherings
• Playground and children’s play area
• Dog park
• Community vegetable garden
• Gym (under implementation)
• 24-hour convenience shop and mini-market
• 24-hour ambulance, seven days a week
• Exclusive internal access to Alphaville Tênis Clubei

Location and surroundings

Points of interest · distances in metres

Alphaville: the address

Alphavillei is the first Brazilian attempt to create an entire neighbourhood from scratch, and the one that succeeded. Split between Baruerii and Santana de Parnaíbai, it was born industrial — HP, Sadia, Du Pont, Confab, Banco Real — and turned residential through the back door, when those companies’ executives wanted to live close to work. Barueri then had 60,000 inhabitants, five sizeable industries and a modest budget; today it is one of the country’s most dynamic municipalities. Residencial 1 sits at the heart of that arrangement, with Alphaville’s commercial centre, Iguatemi Alphavillei and Shopping Tamboréi within walking distance, and a concentration of medical services that few neighbourhoods in the capital can match — Albert Einsteini, Hospital São Luiz, Hospital Nove de Julho and the Delboni, Fleury and A+ laboratories, just metres from the gatehouse. Next door, Tamboréi repeated the formula with more lots and fewer towers. The connection to the capital runs via the Rodovia Castello Brancoi.