Adolpho Lutz

History

Completed in 1969, the Adolpho Lutz belongs to the crop of buildings in which Jardinsi traded its townhouses for towers — and it did so with the grammar of São Paulo modernism at its most confident: a ground floor freed by pilotis, a slender body, continuous ribbon windows. The name honours the sanitary physician Adolpho Lutz (1855–1940), one of the founders of tropical medicine in Brazil. The authorship of the architectural project is not documented in any reliable public source and, for that reason, is not attributed here.

• Concept: the large late-1960s apartment — 290 m², four bedrooms, two en-suite bedrooms — in a tall, narrow tower that frees the ground floor and gives the land back to the plot, with a private hall on each floor solving privacy through the floor plan, not the wall.
• Curiosities: São Paulo has two Adolpho Lutz Buildings, and they are not related. The other one is on Rua General Jardim, 770, in Vila Buarque, is used for commercial and service purposes, was designed in 1972 by Majer Botkowski and built between 1972 and 1975 by Construtora Adolpho Lindenberg — it is catalogued, under that same name, in the collection of the Arquivo Arq. None of this belongs to the Bela Cintra building, which is residential and earlier. The namesake has already circulated mixed up in more than one record.

Architecture and aesthetics

A single tower, slender and tall: the municipal aerial-photogrammetric survey measures 62.1 m in height over a floor projection of about 249 m² — that is, the building’s body occupies less than a quarter of the plot’s 1,046 m², and the rest is setback and garden. Twenty storeys within that 62.1 m give a generous ceiling height, consistent with the date. The descriptions in circulation highlight the ground-floor pilotis and the façade’s ribbon windows as the two gestures that define the building; the architectural authorship, however, is not documented and is not attributed here. Inside, the decision that has aged best is the private hall on each floor, served by two social lifts and one service lift.

Aesthetics and scarcity

Technical specifications

• Towers and units: a single tower, 20 floors.
• Areas: 290 m² in the standard plan, with 4 bedrooms, 2 of them en-suite. The collection in circulation records units from 60 to 400 m².
• Parking: 1 in the standard plan; 2 in some units.
• Structural highlights: private hall on each floor; two social lifts and one service lift; ground floor on pilotis; wide 1,046 m² plot, with about 28 m of frontage onto Rua Bela Cintra — a rare frontage on the block, where most plots measure between 200 and 500 m².
• Registry and parameters: single tower · 20 floors · 1,046 m² plot · frontage of about 28 m · floor projection 249 m² · measured height 62.1 m · 4 bedrooms · 2 en-suite · 1 to 2 parking spaces · 3 lifts · private area of 290 m² in the standard unit · completed 1969 · registry jurisdiction 13th São Paulo Property Registryi · zoning ZM (Lei 16.402/2016).

Location and surroundings

Points of interest · distances in metres

Cerqueira César: the address

Rua Bela Cintra runs through Jardinsi parallel to Rua Haddock Loboi, and number 2047 falls on the most residential stretch of all: between Alameda Lorenai and Rua Oscar Freirei, with shopfront retail a block away and the quiet starting at the next corner. This is the stretch where the post office still writes Consolação, the property registry writes Cerqueira César and the market, simply, writes Jardins — three names for the same tree-lined block. On foot one reaches the shop windows of Rua Oscar Freirei, the café tables of Alameda Lorenai and the shops of Rua Augustai; the metro at Oscar Freire Stationi serves the block, and by car Avenida Paulistai, Avenida Rebouçasi and Avenida Nove de Julhoi are minutes away. This is an address that does not depend on novelty: the street grid, the street-level shops and the trees have been in place for more than half a century.