Who they are
Multiplan was founded in 1974 by economist and businessman José Isaac Peres, who had previously created Veplan Imobiliária, in 1963. It is today one of Brazil’s largest property development companies, listed on the stock exchange for almost two decades, with 20 shopping centres and 2 corporate tower complexes — more than 2 million m² built, around 930,000 m² of gross leasable area and more than 6,000 shops. Over its history, it has built more than 30 developments.
What the market remembers about it are the shopping centres: BH Shopping, in Belo Horizonte, opened in 1979; BarraShopping, in Rio, in 1981; MorumbiShopping, in São Paulo, in 1982. What almost nobody remembers is what came the following year — and that is why Multiplan is in this encyclopaedia. In 1983, the company delivered in Alto da Boa Vista the Chácara Santa Helena, a residential development that the company itself presents, in its official records, as São Paulo’s first gated condominium. The firm defines itself as a pioneer of mixed-use projects — the concept that brings together on the same plot a shopping centre, a corporate tower, a medical centre and a residential building —, and the origin of that pioneering spirit lies precisely in this fold between commerce and housing.
Product vision
- Positioning: large-scale property development, from land to management — the company scouts, develops, sells and then keeps managing what it built. In residential property, this translates into a rare kind of product: a generous layout on a sizeable plot, rather than a stand-alone tower on a street lot.
- Differentiators: scale of land and signature landscaping. At Chácara Santa Helena, 118,282 m² of built area occupy a fraction of a 59,000 m² plot; the rest is woodland, sports courts, a jogging track, a cycle path and the Burle Marx gardens — the defining gesture of the ensemble is one of siting, not façade. It is the same logic the company would later apply to its mixed-use complexes: the value lies in what sits between the buildings.
Works
- Chácara Santa Helena, in Alto da Boa Vista — 5 buildings, 59,000 m² plot, 118,282 m² of built area, Burle Marx gardens. Delivered in 1983.
- Outside the scope of the archive, the firm’s landmarks: BH Shopping (1979), BarraShopping (1981), MorumbiShopping (1982) and ParkShopping, in Brasília.
