March 30, 2016

Bernardes Architecture Brings Buttoned-Down Design to Ipanema Office Building

With all the scantily clad, tan young lovelies parading through Rio de Janeiro’s beachside Ipanema neighborhood, an effort to temper curious gazes and blazing rays might come as a something of a surprise. But that’s precisely what a real-estate developer envisioned to make a small office building in this showy enclave a refuge to nurture creative businesses—in this case a culture magazine and a film production house in addition to a more buttoned-down real-estate management company. So Bernardes Architecture gave its three-story, 3,350-square-foot design an exquisitely understated screen in front of the facade proper.

Photography by Leonardo Finotti.

“Its silent presence reflects the clients’ desire for a discreet, neutral face,” Thiago Bernardes explains of the 35-foot-high, 40-foot-wide screen. After multiple metalwork experiments, he succeeded in lightening its strips of powder-coated aluminum, thanks to a grid of tiny holes. The resulting diagonal egg-crate pattern, as seen from the sidewalk, updates two signatures of Brazilian modernism: One is muxarabi, a Moorish-inflected latticework, and the other is cobogó, a type of breeze-block. 

Photography by Leonardo Finotti.

Photography by Leonardo Finotti.

> See more from the March 2016 issue of Interior Design

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