RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Edifício Copan (Copan Building) is a 118.44-meter (459 ft.) tall, 38-story residential building in downtown São Paulo, Brazil. It has 1,160 apartments, 70 commercial establishments and is one of the largest buildings in Brazil.
After ten years of negotiations, the restoration of Copan is still close to beginning and, eventually, to make feasible the removal of the screen that hides a significant part of the iconic façade. The project presented by a company hired by the condominium was partially approved and called “excellent” by the municipal heritage agencies, with the final version still to be delivered this year.
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The building was designed by Oscar Niemeyer’s office in São Paulo; Niemeyer was personally responsible for the building’s famous sinuous façade. The idea was a building open to a mixed cross-section of Brazilian society. The original project envisioned two buildings, the other being a hotel, but in the end, only the residential building was built.
Construction began in 1952 and, following some interruptions, was completed in 1966. It is one of the largest buildings in Brazil.
Throughout the 2000s, it has had problems with the façade’s maintenance, such as water seepage, falling tiles, de-characterization, concrete detachment, and even exposure of the reinforcement, which was verified in reports and denounced to heritage agencies.
Although the new project has been well received by the Department of Historical Heritage (DPH) and by the Municipal Council for the Preservation of the Historical, Cultural, and Environmental Heritage of the City of São Paulo (Conpresp), Copan’s liquidator is cautious when talking about the situation.
Affonso Celso Prazeres de Oliveira, who has been in charge of the condominium since 1993, says he is still looking for partnerships for the construction work since he only has part of the millions needed in funding. There is still no starting date.
However, the municipal heritage agencies have highlighted that most emergency measures need to be started soon. In a meeting of Conpresp in August, an excerpt from the project was highlighted.
“Although the survey does not point out structural risks to the building, in some points, such as the pillars of the southern facade and service stairs, it is possible to verify critical issues, with a high degree of deterioration of the concrete and its reinforcements, which require urgent treatment.
The proposal was unanimously approved, requiring the emergency work stages reports. Architect Valdir Arruda, from DPH, explained that submissions from years ago were not accepted because they involved materials very distant from the original, such as shiny glass tablets. In addition, they covered only the facade facing Avenida Ipiranga, while the new one is for the entire external area.
In November 2019, the council had agreed to deliver the project in March of the following year, but the deadline was missed with the pandemic.
Although it is one of Niemeyer’s best-known works, it is only listed at the municipal level (since 2012). There is no preservation process study underway at the state and federal levels (according to the Secretariat of Culture).
Therefore, from the heritage point of view (which does not include other permissions for works), the restoration only depends on clearance from Conpresp and DPH.
A diagnosis made in 2019 identified various deficiencies. Among them are “erroneous interventions” that decharacterize the facade, reinforcement corrosion, cracks, seepage, vermin colonies, and crumbling concrete.
“Most problems result from the building’s age, lack of maintenance, and some possible construction flaws (…). The presence of humidity is a factor that ends up aggravating the damage manifestations, amplifying the degradation cycle”. The progressive breakage of the cladding, “which worked as a protective barrier to the concrete, allows the entry of moisture,” says the survey.
Based on the material and its evaluations, the Pedra Institute elaborated the restoration project with different measures between urgent (to guarantee the building’s safety and the residents, employees, and frequenters) and medium and long term.
Among the immediate steps are the recovery of the façade cladding and the waterproofing of the marquee. The project also suggests the resumption of the annual monitoring of the foundations.
This is because the diagnosis indicated that the cracks on the main façade are possibly due to the already known sinking of the building (a problem identified during construction).
In the medium term, Copan will have to deal with the de-characterization committed by the owners of the apartments, who changed the window glass for entirely different materials (colored or frosted), removed latticework, created non-existent windows, installed air conditioning over the brises soleils, and even closed open areas with bricks.
All the interventions will have to be reversed later on. Another indication is removing the railings that surround the external stairway that gives access to the terrace. The indication is to replace them with a structure with a transparent closure to facilitate the visualization of the original project.
Architect-coordinator at the Pedra Institute, Mariana Victor, reminds us that the project aims to be “conservative”, to solve what needs to be fixed. The current phase of the work, she says, is technical drawings, quantification of services, and budget.
The estimate is that the emergency work will take a year and a half to two years, depending on the condominium’s investment capacity. According to the architect, the building will be able to function normally during the works.