Riviera de São Lourenço

History

In 1979, on a helicopter flight over São Lourenço beach, the directors of the companies that owned the tract — Praias Paulistas S.A. and Cia Fazenda Acaraú — began talking with the board of Soblocoi about developing those nine million square metres. By August of that year the contract was signed, the subdivision was approved and registered, and the site was set up. The starting point of the Urban Plan was the layout of the road network, designed by architects Oswaldo Correa Gonçalvesi and Benno Perelmutteri, in compliance with guidelines provided by the City of Santos — Bertioga was still a Santos district at the time. On top of that layout, Sobloco wrote what would come to define the place: the regulation of land use and occupation, the setbacks, the limitations, the incentives to build, the restrictions on speculation and the development’s legal structure.

It was an unprecedented project and there was scepticism. Building an entire town, with complete infrastructure, on a deserted beach seemed reckless — and the access roads did not even exist yet: trucks and machinery arrived by barge. The Mogi-Bertioga highway opened in 1982 and the Rodovia Rio-Santosi in 1985. By 1982 there were already twenty kilometres of kerbed streets, the first water-treatment plant under construction, and eight thousand coconut-palm seedlings imported from Bahia growing in the estate’s own nursery. Sales began in January 1983, in Module 5, today Coqueiros. The first building, the Riviera Flat, went up that same year in Module 3, with a sign that was a prophecy: “a model of urbanisation is being created here”.

• Concept: the planned neighbourhood as a long-term undertaking — its own zoning, a final population known from day one, and infrastructure sized in advance for a density that would only arrive decades later.
• Trivia: in 2000, the Riviera’s Environmental Management System was certified under the ISO 14001 standard — according to the development’s own administration, the first urban development project in the world to receive this recognition. In forty years, the neighbourhood has never been hit by a water-supply shortage, by sewage pollution of the beach, or by flooding. The Associação dos Amigos da Riviera de São Lourenço, created in 1982 to operate and maintain everything that has been built, is today, with more than five hundred employees, the municipality’s largest employer.

Architecture and aesthetics

A planned neighbourhood has no façade — it has height limits, setbacks and layout, and that is where the design lies. The Riviera is organised into 33 modules over an area of nine million square metres, bordered by the beach, by the Rodovia Rio-Santosi, by Jardim São Lourenço and by the Indaiá neighbourhood. Densification followed residential, commercial and service zones with occupation rates and floor-area ratios set from the outset, which means the growth axes — vertical and horizontal — had already been decided on paper before they existed.

The built result is a low, homogeneous scale: about two thousand houses and two hundred buildings of six to ten storeys, with no isolated tower breaking the skyline. What gives it unity is not the style of the buildings, but the permanence of the rule and the greenery — nearly a third of the total area, 2.6 million square metres, is green and institutional space, with landscaping that began in 1982 in the estate’s own nursery, with coconut palms brought from Bahia.

Mobility is also design. More than half of the properties are less than a kilometre from shops and services; there are 4.3 km of cycle paths and 36 km of pavements more than two metres wide along the avenues. At summer peaks, with seventy thousand inhabitants, the neighbourhood records no congestion.

Aesthetics and scarcity

Technical specifications

• Towers and units: an open, planned neighbourhood, with around 12,000 housing units built — approximately 2,000 houses and 200 buildings of six to ten storeys —, plus a shopping mall, a commercial and service centre, a hypermarket, schools, medical and dental care, serviced flats and hotels.
• Sizes: varied, defined by each module’s own zoning — there is no single unit type.
• Parking: as per the design of each building or residence.
• Structural highlights: total area of 8,849,164.64 m² across 33 modules · 2,600,000 m² of green and institutional areas, nearly a third of the total · own systems for water capture, treatment and distribution and for sewage collection and treatment · waste management and beach cleaning · 4.3 km of cycle paths and 36 km of wide pavements · own seedling nursery since 1982 · a helipad serving the neighbourhood, in Indaiá, 3 km away, with SNRI designation.
• Registry and parameters: subdivision approved in 1979 and registered with the Land Registry, under continuous development ever since under the responsibility of a single company, Soblocoi · around 60% of the project built · own land use and occupation rules, observed since the late 1970s · Environmental Management System certified and audited under ISO 14001 since 2000 · operation and maintenance in the hands of the Associação dos Amigos da Riviera de São Lourenço, created in 1982 · the development occupies 1.8% of Bertiogai‘s territory and accounts for more than half of the municipality’s tax revenue in the segment.

Leisure and facilities

• Riviera Shopping, first section opened in January 1991
• 18-hole, par-3 golf course, open Tuesday to Sunday, with a pro for lessons
• Riviera Golf Club, with a 713 m² clubhouse designed by architect Luiz Pereira Barreto — piano bar, veranda, terrace overlooking the course and a fireplace room
• Riviera Tênis, in Module 18 — 4 floodlit synthetic-clay courts and 3 beach tennis courts, over 7,000 m², with changing rooms and a programme of tournaments and clinics
• Sociedade Hípica de Bertioga, in Module 25 — classical riding, organised rides, lessons for beginners and a training centre
• Private surf beach, with schools set up on weekends, holidays and bank holidays
• Cycle paths, wide pavements and sand roads for running and walking
• RiviBike, the neighbourhood’s bicycle-sharing system
• Commercial and service centre, hypermarket, bars and restaurants
• Medical and dental services, schools, serviced flats and hotels
• Helipad with air-taxi service and air shuttle

Location and surroundings

Points of interest · distances in metres

Bertioga: the address

Bertiogai is not a neighbourhood: it is a municipality on the northern São Paulo coast, 120 kilometres from the capital, that was a district of Santos until becoming independent in 1991 — and whose recent history is intertwined with that of this development. The Riviera occupies 1.8% of the municipal territory and accounts for more than fifty per cent of the city’s tax revenue, besides generating more than five thousand direct and indirect jobs. Access is via km 212 of the Rodovia Rio-Santosi, arriving via the Mogi-Bertioga road or the Imigrantes–Anchieta corridor through Santos. In July 2026, a new gateway opened, linking the development to the neighbouring Indaiá district — the gesture sums up what the Riviera has always been and sets it apart from almost the entire coastline: an open neighbourhood, integrated into the municipality’s road network, and not a walled-off condominium.