Mackintosh

History

Mackintosh is the work of Sancai, a São Paulo construction and development company operating on three fronts — land subdivision and urban development, residential development and commercial construction. In the company’s residential portfolio, the building shares the shelf with Tarsila, in Jardim Guedala, and Picasso, in Itaim Bibii: three addresses named after figures from the arts, and Mackintosh is the only one of the three in Pinheiros. The construction company itself records the building as having 11,500 m² of built area and a single floor plan size — 335 m² per apartment, with five bedrooms, four suites and five parking spaces. The building has been complete for more than two decades; market records place delivery in 2002. The authorship of the architectural design is not documented in any public source and, for that reason, is not attributed here.

• Concept: a single floor area. Eleven thousand five hundred square metres of built area staked entirely on a 335 m² apartment, repeated — no compact floor plan, no exception floor to balance the development’s finances.
• Curiosities: Sanca’s three residential buildings carry artists’ names — Mackintosh, Tarsila and Picasso — a rare habit at a time when the São Paulo market named buildings after French place names. The name is also the only thing about the building the market spells two different ways: it circulates with a K, and in some records, with an H.

Architecture and aesthetics

What defines Mackintosh is not a façade gesture — the design’s authorship does not appear in any public source, and the house does not attribute what it cannot prove. It is the choice of programme. A single tower, exclusively residential use, and practically no variation in floor plan: circulating records show units between 335 and 350 m², with the same base design. In a stretch of Pinheiros where most of the built stock has two and three bedrooms, the building is a block of large, identical apartments — the low density does not come from a declared architectural stance, it comes from the arithmetic of dividing 11,500 m² by 335.

Aesthetics and scarcity

Technical specifications

• Towers and units: 1 tower, exclusively residential use. The number of storeys and the total number of units are not documented in any public source.
• Floor areas: 335 m² in the standard floor plan, with 5 bedrooms and 4 suites, according to the construction company; circulating market records show units of up to 350 m².
• Parking spaces: 5 in the standard floor plan; up to 7 in the larger units.
• Structural highlights: 11,500 m² of built area dedicated to a single unit type; social lobby and strictly residential use throughout the building.
• Registry and parameters: 1 tower · 5 bedrooms · 4 suites in the standard unit · 3 to 5 bathrooms · 5 to 7 parking spaces · private areas of 335 m² to 350 m² · built area 11,500 m² · delivered 2002.

Location and surroundings

Points of interest · distances in metres

Pinheiros: the address

Pinheirosi is the neighbourhood where São Paulo turned contemporary without demolishing what it had. Rua Doutor Virgílio de Carvalho Pinto is a short, residential street in the heart of the neighbourhood — local traffic, tree-lined pavement, very little passing trade —, and it is precisely this kind of street that has become scarce there: around it, the life of Largo da Batata, the dining scene of Teodoro Sampaio, the galleries and cafés that made the neighbourhood’s name, and the financial hub of Avenida Brigadeiro Faria Limai a few minutes away. The underground’s Yellow Line stitches the address to the rest of the city without a car, and Esporte Clube Pinheirosi and Parque Villa-Lobosi take care of the weekend to the west. It is a neighbourhood that gained density upwards, not inwards: the street grid and street-level shops remain the same.