São Paulo Architecture Show on Brazil’s Ohtake Family Closes Sunday

BRAZIL · ARCHITECTURE

Sunday is the last day of Ruy Ohtake — Percursos do Habitar at the Casa-Atelie Tomie Ohtake in São Paulo, the inaugural show that opened the artist’s former home as a permanent cultural-programming space. The Tomie Ohtake exhibition presents six residential projects by architect Ruy Ohtake, designed between the 1960s and 2010s. The venue itself, designed by Ruy for his mother in 1968, is part of the curatorial argument.

What the Tomie Ohtake closing show puts on display

The exhibition gathers six residential projects by Ruy Ohtake, designed across five decades from the late 1960s into the 2010s. The houses include the Casa-Atelie Tomie Ohtake itself, the Residencia Chiyo Hama, and the Residencia Nadir Zacarias.

Visitors see scale models of every house, historical photographs of the buildings and recent records, plus technical drawings and architectural sketches by Ohtake himself. A set of resident video testimonies adds first-person accounts of how the houses are lived in.

The exhibition also includes the Condominio Residencial Heliopolis, a major social-housing project that demonstrates how the architect’s principles extended into larger-scale public work. Ruy Ohtake worked on the Heliopolis project in partnership with the city of São Paulo and federal housing programmes.

The curatorial argument of the Tomie Ohtake show

Curators Catalina Bergues and Sabrina Fontenele organised the show around the residential project as a site of memory, sociability, and the construction of everyday life. The argument is that Ohtake was always thinking about the home as a space of shared living rather than as a private retreat.

The strategic uses of natural light, the internal gardens, and the connection between interior and exterior come through as recurring Ohtake signatures. The curators trace these elements through the chosen houses to argue for a coherent five-decade vision.

Common areas were sized larger and intimate areas more compact in his work. The proportioning reflects a view of domestic life as fundamentally social rather than individualistic, an approach Ohtake carried into his civic and institutional commissions through his career.

The Casa-Atelie venue in the Tomie Ohtake closing weekend

The house at Rua Antonio de Macedo Soares 1800 in the Campo Belo district was Tomie Ohtake’s home and studio for 45 years. The artist died in 2015 at the age of 101, and the home preserved her studio environment.

Ruy Ohtake designed the brutalist residence for his mother in 1968 when he was at the start of his career. The building includes a double-height central area, an integrated studio with abundant natural light, and an internal garden that connects living spaces.

The decision to open the house as a permanent cultural programming space was announced in late 2025, with the Ruy Ohtake show timed as the inaugural exhibition. The plan is for the Casa-Atelie to host a continuous programme of architecture, design, and visual-arts shows across the year.

The Tomie Ohtake legacy and the Instituto’s 25th anniversary

The Instituto Tomie Ohtake, based in the larger Pinheiros district, celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2026. A November exhibition will pay tribute to the artist who gives the institution its name with a curated selection of her own work.

Tomie Ohtake was born in Kyoto in 1913 and arrived in Brazil at the age of 23. She became one of the leading figures of Brazilian abstract painting through the 1960s and worked into her late nineties. She is considered the matriarch of Brazil’s nipo-brasileira artistic tradition.

Ruy Ohtake, born 1938 and died in 2021, designed signature buildings across São Paulo and beyond, including the Renaissance Hotel, the Hotel Unique, and the Instituto Tomie Ohtake building itself. His son Rodrigo Ohtake continues the family architecture practice.

Practical details for the final Tomie Ohtake exhibition day

Sunday hours are 10am to 5pm at the Casa-Atelie. Tickets are R$50 ($9.94) full price and R$25 ($4.97) for students, those over 60, and teachers with credentials. Nubank cardholders also receive the discounted rate.

The Casa-Atelie sits in a quiet residential street in Campo Belo, accessible by car or by walking from the Aeroporto-Congonhas metro station. Aeroporto-Congonhas station is on the green line of the São Paulo metro network.

The next exhibition at the Casa-Atelie is in scheduling. The Instituto Tomie Ohtake has signalled that the autumn slot will be given to a younger architect, continuing the inaugural show’s framing of the venue as a generational dialogue space.