Narciso

History

Narciso is at number 57 on Oscar Freirei, practically abutting Rua da Consolaçãoi, in the stretch where the most famous street in the Jardinsi is still a street to live on, not a shop window. It is the stretch that the land registry calls Cerqueira Césari and that the market insists on calling Jardim América — the postcode says Cerqueira César. The building belongs to the batch of named residential buildings that occupied this stretch of the street before the recent verticalisation; neither the year of completion nor the project’s authorship is documented in any public source, and for that reason neither is fixed here.

• Concept: one apartment per floor and a large four-suite floor plan on a block in the Jardins that no longer has land to repeat the formula.
• Curiosities: this first stretch of the street is a small collection of proper names. Around number 57, one after another, stand the Lorraine, the Flôr de Lotus, the Rio Amazonas, the Provence and the Alice — the now almost extinct habit of naming each residential building the way one names a house.

Architecture and aesthetics

A single tower set back from the street line, with the entrance garden serving as an antechamber — a common solution from the era when Oscar Freire was still a residential address and the setback was a luxury, not a zoning requirement. What defines the building is the floor plan, not the façade: one unit per floor, a living room spanning several spaces with a balcony, a guest toilet, four suites with a walk-in closet and separate bathroom in the master, a kitchen that can open to the social area, and full staff quarters. The architectural authorship is not documented in any public source and is not attributed here.

Aesthetics and scarcity

Technical specifications

• Towers and units: 1 tower, one apartment per floor.
• Sizes: 241 to 250 m² in the floor plans in circulation, with 4 bedrooms; the renovated units register 4 suites, with the master having a separate walk-in closet and bathroom. Listing records also register units of up to 280 m².
• Parking spaces: 2.
• Structural highlights: front setback, one apartment per floor, full staff quarters and lift.
• Registry and parameters: 1 tower · 1 apartment per floor · 4 bedrooms · 4 suites · 2 parking spaces · private areas from 241 m² to 250 m².

Location and surroundings

Points of interest · distances in metres

Cerqueira César: the address

Cerqueira Césari is the official name of the neighbourhood the city has learned to call Jardinsi. The first block of Oscar Freirei is the start of the street, counted from Rua da Consolaçãoi: it is still residential, leafy and flat, and only becomes the international shop window a few blocks further on, past Rua Bela Cintrai and Alameda Casa Brancai. It is an address with a double life — on foot, the street shops, galleries and tables of the Jardins; by car, Avenida Paulistai minutes away, Colégio Dante Alighierii, Jardim Pamplona Shoppingi and Club Athletico Paulistanoi within the same short radius. The grid has been consolidated for decades and very little land is left to develop.