Casa Piauí Higienópolis

History

The 2,700 m² plot on the corner of Piauí and Itacolomi holds a mansion built between 1916 and 1918, at the height of the coffee boom, for the family of José Martiniano Rodrigues Alves, nephew of the former president Rodrigues Alves. It is a landmark of the residential architecture of São Paulo’s coffee elite: inspired by Art Nouveau, it displays stained-glass windows, wood panelling, generous proportions and ornamental ironwork in which coffee leaves are shaped in iron. The house has weathered the century, the neighbourhood’s changing profile and the verticalisation that reshaped Higienópolis — and it is still standing.

Casa Piauí is the development born around it. Carried out by Helbori with MPDi, the project restores the mansion and incorporates it as a living part of the development, rather than treating it as an obstacle on the plot. The architecture is by Marchi Arquiteturai, the interiors are by Fernanda Marquesi and the landscaping is by Benedito Abbudi. The developer sums up the operation like this: “it is not just a preserved building; it is a gesture of delicacy towards history.”

• Concept: “traditionally contemporary” — a timeless-language tower that accepts coexisting with a hundred-year-old mansion on the same lot, and uses that coexistence as its guiding idea.
• Trivia: the ground floor houses a ComVem, a convenience mall with a mix of shops, dining and services, accessible to residents by lift. The tower is served by a coded Shabbat service lift.

Architecture and aesthetics

Marchi Arquiteturai‘s project organises the lot into two presences: the restored mansion, which anchors the ground floor and the corner, and the residential tower, which is resolved in a contemporary language with no stylistic quotation — the stated idea is not to create a pastiche of its hundred-year-old neighbour, but to coexist with it. The ground floor distributes the lobby, separate social and service accesses, delivery, a lobby area, a function room with an outdoor lounge and the mansion itself; the leisure facilities rise entirely to the third floor, freeing up the ground.

Each apartment has a private social hall, served by two private social lifts (one per line). In the floor plans, Fernanda Marquesi resolves the four-suite residence with a social terrace with a barbecue, a spacious master suite with a closet area and its own terrace, a pantry, wardrobe space in the private circulation and glass balustrades; all bathrooms have natural ventilation, except the guest toilet. The infrastructure comes ready for a gourmet countertop, a charcoal barbecue, a jacuzzi and air conditioning, with a dedicated technical terrace for the condensing units. Landscaping is by Benedito Abbudi.

Aesthetics and scarcity

Technical specifications

• Towers and units: 1 tower, 20 residential floors (from the 4th to the 23rd), 40 residences, 2 per floor.
• Sizes: 249 m² (4 suites, 3 parking spaces, 5th to 15th floor, 12 units) · 250 m² (4 suites, 3 or 4 parking spaces, 6th to 16th floor, 13 units) · 255 m² (4 suites, 4 parking spaces, 17th to 23rd floor, 14 units) · 260 m² garden unit (4 suites, 3 parking spaces, uncovered terrace, 4th floor, 1 unit). All with private storage.
• Parking: 3 or 4 per unit; 136 spaces in total for the residential portion.
• Structural highlights: plot of 2,700.98 m² · restored 1916–1918 mansion integrated into the development · ComVem convenience mall on the ground floor · private social hall per unit · 2 private social lifts (one per line) and 1 coded Shabbat service lift · private storage in every unit · social terrace with barbecue · natural ventilation in every bathroom except the guest toilet · technical terrace for air conditioning · electronic lock on the service access.
• Registry and parameters: plot 2,700.98 m² (2,750 m² in the municipal tax register) · tax lot 010.009.0006-1 · zoning ZEU · registry jurisdiction 5º Registro de Imóveis de São Pauloi. (Launch: registry parameters to be consolidated upon the completion filing.)

Leisure and facilities

• Function room with outdoor lounge
• Playground
• Play room
• Games room with outdoor lounge
• Fitness and gym room
• Fitness terrace
• Adult pool with 20 m lap lane
• Children’s pool
• Pool bar
• Solarium
• Massage room
• Sauna
• Spa with showers and outdoor lounge
• Lobby
• Delivery space
• Bicycle storage
• ComVem convenience mall

Location and surroundings

Points of interest · distances in metres

Higienópolis: the address

Higienópolisi is the neighbourhood São Paulo built when coffee still ruled, and it has weathered the century without losing its character: short blocks, dense tree cover, townhouses and mansions coexisting with modern signature buildings. The corner of Piauí and Itacolomi sits right in the middle of this — Itacolomi is one of the neighbourhood’s most walkable streets, with cafés and traditional schools, and Parque Buenos Airesi lies just ahead. Avenida Angélicai provides the link to Avenida Paulistai, to downtown and to the West Zone, and Avenida Higienópolis concentrates the neighbourhood’s shops — bookshops, cafés and the Shopping Pátio Higienópolisi. It is one of the few central addresses in São Paulo where the entire routine, from bread to school, fits within a walk.