Praça Villa Lobos

History

Praça Villa-Lobos is the residential arm of the complex that Casuarinai — the company that gathers Grupo Oscar Americano’s development portfolio — raised in the strip between the marginal and the park. The idea was not to build a building, but a closed-off piece of city: nine identical towers, one family per floor, arranged around a thirteen-thousand-square-metre common square that doubles as an internal street. The plot settled from the outset the one thing money can’t buy in São Paulo — the view: the towers face Parque Villa-Lobosi, a public area that will never be built on.

• Concept: nine towers of one flat per floor around a private square, with the park on one side and the shopping centre on the other — the club-condominium treated as a city block, not as a building.
• Trivia: the address changed its name without moving. The stretch of Avenida das Nações Unidas where the condominium stands was renamed Avenida Doutora Ruth Cardoso by a 2018 municipal law, and that is how the condominium itself registers today — although much of the market still advertises it under the old name. With the postal service, postcode 05477-000 identifies the address as Jardim Universidade Pinheiros, a subdivision of Alto de Pinheirosi. The condominium also has a private passage giving access to Shopping Villa-Lobos, its next-door neighbour.

Architecture and aesthetics

The project is by Júlio Nevesi‘s office, the same one that designed the Shopping Villa-Lobos complex next door — which explains the dialogue between the two pieces, linked by an internal passage. The layout is the gesture that defines the complex: instead of a single high-density slab, nine slender towers of twenty-three floors, one flat per floor, set apart from one another so that none blocks another’s view. The void between them — the square — is what was deliberately left over, and it is what the complex sells.

Aesthetics and scarcity

Technical specifications

• Towers and units: 9 towers, 23 standard floors, 1 flat per floor, plus duplex penthouse.
• Areas: 264 to 741 m², with 3 to 6 bedrooms; the 264 m² floor plan has 3 en-suites.
• Parking spaces: 5 set in the standard floor plan; 6 in the larger units.
• Structural highlights: 13,000 m² private square between the towers, 2,500 m² leisure area, internal passage giving access to Shopping Villa-Lobos and a view of Parque Villa-Lobosi.
• Registry and parameters: 9 towers · 23 standard floors plus duplex penthouse · 1 flat per floor · 3 to 6 bedrooms · 5 to 6 parking spaces · private areas of 264 m² to 741 m² · common square of 13,000 m² · leisure area of 2,500 m².

Leisure and facilities

• 13,000 m² private square
• Swimming pool
• Gym rooms
• Sports court
• Playground
• Party room
• Sauna
• Private passage to Shopping Villa-Lobos
• 24-hour concierge

Location and surroundings

Points of interest · distances in metres

Alto de Pinheiros: the address

Two names for the same address

The postal service registers this stretch as Jardim Universidade Pinheiros — a registry name almost no one uses. The market, residents and anyone searching here say Alto de Pinheiros. The page adopts the name in common use: it is by this name that people search, advertise and buy.

Alto de Pinheirosi is one of the most residential and leafy neighbourhoods of the West Zone, and this is its most unusual stretch: the strip between the marginal and the park, where the neighbourhood touches Parque Villa-Lobosi and the river. It is an address of dual nature — the quiet of a residential street at the back and the city’s artery at the front, with direct access to the marginal and to the bridge to the Cidade Universitária. Around it, the area concentrates the schools that made the neighbourhood’s name and the established commerce of Pinheirosi, a few minutes away by car.