Sion

History

Edifício Sion occupies the residential stretch of Rua Maranhão that climbs from Angélicai towards Avenida Higienópolis, a block from Colégio Nossa Senhora de Sion — the French school that has been in the neighbourhood since the start of the last century and with which the building shares its name. The condominium has been constituted as a legal entity since 1985. The authorship of the project, the company responsible for the construction and the year of delivery are not documented in a source that withstands verification and, for that reason, are not attributed here: the authorship claims circulating in the building’s advertisements all share the same origin and are not supported by an independent source.

• Concept: one apartment per floor in house-sized floor area — privacy resolved by the floor plan, not the wall, on one of Higienópolis’s most residential streets.
• Curiosities: the floor plans in circulation include two live-in staff quarters, a pantry and as many as six bathrooms on a 446 m² floor. It is the signature of a generation in which the entire programme of the large house moved up into the apartment, with the social wing separated from the private wing by an internal hall — an arrangement that has practically disappeared from later launches.

Architecture and aesthetics

A single tower, one apartment per floor. Since there is only one unit per storey, the lift opens directly into each family’s private hall and the floor plan can occupy the entire slab, with no wall shared with a neighbour and no ventilation shaft in the middle. The units’ interiors have been redone over the decades — some apartments are entirely clad in Carrara marble, from the hall to the living room, the result of renovation rather than the original design. The building’s architectural authorship is not publicly documented and, for that reason, is not attributed here.

Aesthetics and scarcity

Technical specifications

• Towers and units: 1 tower, 1 apartment per floor.
• Floor areas: 446 to 460 m² in the units in circulation, with 4 to 5 bedrooms and 4 to 5 suites depending on the layout; up to six bathrooms, plus two live-in staff quarters and a pantry.
• Parking spaces: 2 to 3.
• Structural features: private hall per floor; social wing and private wing separated by an internal hall.
• Registration and parameters: 1 tower · 1 apartment per floor · private areas of 446 m² to 460 m² · 4 to 5 bedrooms · 4 to 5 suites · 2 to 3 parking spaces.

Location and surroundings

Points of interest · distances in metres

Higienópolis: the address

Higienópolisi is the neighbourhood where the São Paulo elite decided to live and never changed its mind — and Rua Maranhão is one of its residential spines, tree-lined, with local traffic only and no street-front shops. A few minutes’ walk away are Parque Buenos Airesi, Shopping Pátio Higienópolisi, Praça Vilaboim with its pavement tables, Hospital Samaritanoi and the row of traditional schools — Sion, Rainha da Paz, Mackenzie, FAAP — that makes the neighbourhood the address of families who choose the school before choosing the house. It is a fabric that has been settled for more than a century: there is almost no land left to develop, and what exists has already been protected by habit.