Michelle

History

Michelle is a Seisai building, and that explains almost everything about it. The developer named practically its entire portfolio after women — Beatriz, Camila, Carolina, Clarice, Cláudia, Daniela, Débora, Diana, Elizabeth, Fernanda, Gisele, Heloísa, Juliana, Lúcia, Luciana, Marina, Michelle, Mônica, Nathalie, Nicole, Patrícia, Renata, Roberta, Rosana, Simone, Suzana, Tatiana, Thais, Victoria, Viviane — and concentrated much of that collection on a handful of streets in Itaim Bibii and Pinheiros. Rua Jesuíno Arruda is the extreme case: Seisai delivered nine buildings on it. Michelle is at number 168, between Luciana (134) and Tatiana (187), and the same street also holds Noah, Cindy & Naomi, Marina, Juliana, Rosana and Fernanda. It is not a building standing alone in a neighbourhood: it is a chapter of a street built almost entirely by a single company.

• Concept: a large family floor plan on a residential street in Itaim, on the scale on which the whole street was conceived — few units per floor, generous floor area, and a neighbourhood of the same vintage on both sides.
• Curiosities: three of Michelle’s street neighbours — Luciana, Tatiana and Rosana, all by Seisai — have their own postcode with the postal service, a distinction only given to an established building. The developer’s collection of women’s names is so extensive that Jesuíno Arruda works, in practice, as its open-air showcase.

Architecture and aesthetics

A single street-level tower, on the residential scale that Jesuíno Arruda kept while the rest of Itaim Bibii turned into a corporate axis. The floor plans are of another vintage: a spacious living room with balcony, dining room, kitchen with pantry and a full staff quarters — the floor area that today is only found in exceptional product. At the top, a duplex penthouse with a private lift, a raised deck with pool and a panoramic view over the neighbourhood. The authorship of the architectural project is not publicly documented and, for that reason, is not attributed here.

Aesthetics and scarcity

Technical specifications

• Towers and units: 1 tower.
• Floor areas: 194 m² in the standard units, with 4 bedrooms (1 suite) and up to 4 bathrooms; 335 m² in the duplex penthouse, with 4 bedrooms, all suites, and 5 bathrooms. Records in circulation also indicate intermediate floor plans of up to around 316 m².
• Parking: 2.
• Structural highlights: duplex penthouse with private lift, raised deck with pool and gourmet space; full staff quarters and pantry in the standard units.
• Registry and parameters: 1 tower · 4 bedrooms · 1 to 4 suites · 3 to 5 bathrooms · 2 parking spaces · private areas from 194 m² to 335 m².

Location and surroundings

Points of interest · distances in metres

Itaim Bibi: the address

Rua Jesuíno Arruda is one of the streets that explain why Itaim Bibii withstood its own success. It sits in the residential heart, between the Avenida Brigadeiro Faria Limai axis and Parque do Povoi, and kept its residential profile while the avenues around it turned into offices, restaurants and bars. It is tree-lined, with light traffic and low house numbers, with the rare advantage of being a few minutes’ walk from the country’s most expensive financial centre — the Itaim resident is, often, the professional who works there. The neighbourhood delivers the convenience of the business centre without charging its density.