RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Almost 100 years after the city’s first skyscraper was built, São Paulo will inaugurate a new giant in 2022. With its 172 meters in height, the ‘Platina 220’ will become the highest building in the capital, surpassing the Mirante do Vale, 2m shorter.
For the first time the tallest building in São Paulo is not located downtown, but in Tatuapé, in the city’s East Zone. Its inauguration points to a vertical trend in the traditional São Paulo district, which for years has been exchanging its houses and villas landscape for tall buildings.
Still under construction at number 220 Bom Sucesso Street, the ‘Platina’ won the rank of tallest in the city in March 2021, when its 50th and last floor was built.
So far, 2,300 tons of steel and 29,100 m3 of concrete have been used. To support the giant, 32 meters of stakes were bored through the ground. Twenty elevators will be installed for public access to the building, which will have mixed use, i.e., commercial rooms and residential apartments.
São Paulo’s tallest skyscrapers:
Platinum 2020 – 172 meters
Mirante do Vale – 170 meters
Figueira Altos do Tatuapé – 168 meters
Born and raised in the Tatuapé district, urban planner Lucas Chiconi believes that the set of transformations brought about by the new – and tall – developments erases the neighborhood’s memory and identity. In 2019, Chiconi was part of a group that tried to prevent the demolition of a set of houses from the 1950s, part of the João Migliari worker village, 1 km from where the Platina 220 is located.
Twenty of the 60 houses were demolished to build a development. The 40 remaining houses are now being evaluated by historical heritage bodies. But before the result was available, the owner had the houses demolished. Only 5 houses are still standing, next to a fenced vacant lot where the village used to be.
“It is precisely these groups of houses, with architectural, social, and economic significance, that help me identify myself as a denizen of Tatuapé,” says Chiconi.
A number of houses also occupied the block where today the tallest building in São Paulo stands. Semi-detached houses of different colors, which referred to the neighborhood’s industrial period, housed residences and small businesses.
The urban planner explains that the neighborhood has undergone an intense verticalization process since the 2000s. As of 2010, this phenomenon gained more luxurious developments, which the specialist describes as an “ostentatious” profile.
For Aline Meira, architect, urban planner and coordinator of Urban Science at Porte Engenharia e Urbanismo, the construction company responsible for Platina 220, the new always has a big impact on people. According to Aline, the construction company was not going for the title of the city’s tallest, it was focused on verticalization so the building would use the smallest possible area of land, and thus have more area dedicated to sidewalks and green areas.
Thus, rather than building two 25-story towers, for example, it chose one of 50. “It is a solution that only a larger setback [between the building and the street] and a narrower and more vertical tower allow,” says Aline.
The construction company was founded in the region 35 years ago and the launch intends to attract companies to the East Zone and offer high-end residential apartments, such as the “Figueira Altos do Tatuapé” skyscraper.
Located little under a mile (1.4 km) from Platina 220, in the heart of the neighborhood, it has become the tallest residential building in the city, and is scheduled to be inaugurated in August. Although it is 4 meters shorter than the Platina, the building is set in a higher point in the region, which makes it seem even more gigantic.
This is one of the examples of what urban planner Chiconi describes as “ostentatious.” With 337 m2 one-per-floor apartments sold for about R$5 million (US$989,000), the residential building has sold 47 of its 48 units.
Recently, a photo went viral on the internet showing the extensive shadow of the 168 meter tall building over the low houses around it.
According to the city’s current planning, the building could not even be built on that site. But months before the current Master Plan was approved, which guides how and where the city should grow until 2030, the construction company submitted the application for the Figueiras residential project.
The request for approval of the construction work at the São Paulo City Hall was submitted in September 2013, and in July 2014 the Master Plan was sanctioned, limiting new buildings within neighborhoods to 8 stories. Because it submitted its building application before the rule, Figueiras was able to build 50 stories, instead of the 8 provided for in the new legislation.
The rule is intended to prevent neighborhoods from being verticalized, causing mobility and infrastructure problems. “If we have several skyscrapers, what we see in Vila Olímpia will happen, with a traffic jam in the garage before you even leave the building,” explained architect and urban planner Danielle Klintowitz, coordinator of the Pólis Institute and member of the Municipal Urban Policy Council. Each of Figueiras’ 48 apartments has five parking spaces.
For Danielle, the photo showing the shadow of Figueiras over the Tatuapé neighborhood is an example of what could happen if the verticalization process intensifies further within the neighborhood.
Developer Porte said that the shadow is thin, as the building is very tall, and rotates rapidly, like “the hands of a clock.”
The Platina, the tallest in the city, is a five-minute walk away from the Tatuapé Subway and CPTM train stations, placing it within the rules established by the 2014 Master Plan, which aims to densify the city’s public transportation axes.
The height limit for buildings is back on the agenda this year, with the prospect of a revision of the Master Plan, as provided by law. Real estate market sectors are calling for a relaxation of the rules, while civil society organizations want to maintain the plan’s current provisions.