Irma Aguiar de Souza

History

The Edifício Irma Aguiar de Souza belongs to the generation that made Higienópolisi vertical without giving up the scale of the houses it replaced: one flat per floor, sizes above four hundred square metres, and a plot of more than fifteen hundred square metres for fifteen families. Like many buildings of the same vintage in the neighbourhood, it bears the personal name of someone honoured by the developer — a custom the buildings of Higienópolis kept for decades and that today is the dated mark of an entire generation. The authorship of the design and the delivery year are not publicly documented and, for that reason, are not attributed here.

• Concept: fifteen families in fifteen storeys — privacy resolved by the layout, not by a wall or by the condominium rules.
• Curiosities: three lifts for fifteen flats, two social and one for service. It is a ratio no developer repeats today: in a contemporary tower, three lifts serve eighty or a hundred units. Here they serve fifteen.

Architecture and aesthetics

A single tower, fifteen storeys, one flat per floor. With only one unit per slab, the floor plan occupies the whole storey: the lift opens directly into the family’s hall, there is no shared wall or ventilation shaft, and windows run along every face. The flat is organised around a multi-room living area, fully open to a wide-span balcony that frames the street’s greenery — and it is this balcony, not the floor area, that defines the building on the inside. The structure uses thick slabs, and the upkeep of the common areas is of a high standard for the building’s age. The authorship of the architectural design is not publicly documented and, for that reason, is not attributed here.

Aesthetics and scarcity

Technical specifications

• Towers and units: 1 tower, 15 storeys, 15 flats, 1 per floor.
• Sizes: the documented unit has 468 m² of usable area within a total area of 681 m², with 4 bedrooms, all suites, and 6 bathrooms. Records in circulation indicate floor plans from 347 m² to 500 m².
• Parking spaces: 3, with a private storage unit.
• Structural highlights: one flat per floor with no shared wall, two social lifts and one service lift, a wide-span balcony over the street’s greenery, thick slabs, plot of approximately 1,525 m².
• Registration and parameters: 1 tower · 15 storeys · 15 units · 1 flat per floor · 4 bedrooms · 4 suites · 6 bathrooms · 3 parking spaces · 3 lifts (2 social + 1 service) · usable area of 468 m² within 681 m² of total area · plot of ~1,525 m².

Location and surroundings

Points of interest · distances in metres

Higienópolis: the address

Higienópolisi was born as the neighbourhood of the coffee barons’ mansions, on the ridge between the streams of the city centre and the hill of Avenida Paulistai — the position was chosen for hygiene, and the name stuck. A century later, it is one of the few places in São Paulo where life happens on foot: Praça Vilaboim and Parque Buenos Airesi a few steps away, Shopping Pátio Higienópolisi on the next corner, and a concentration of schools and universities — Sion, Mackenzie, FAAP — that has sustained demand in the neighbourhood for generations. Rua Rio de Janeiro cuts through the residential core and is one of the quietest streets: no shops, no through traffic, with century-old trees that the buildings here treated as part of the design.