GROUPE ALLARD PRESENTS ROSEWOOD TOWER, ON THE GROUNDS OF CIDADE MATARAZZO Designed by Jean Nouvel, the luxury hotel complex, only a minute’s walk from Paulista Avenue, will be inaugurated toward the end of 2018.
Scheduled to open toward the end of 2018, Rosewood Tower was conceived as a tribute to the Atlantic Forest that lines much of Brazil’s coast. Jean Nouvel’s design is for a “landscape building” that feeds into the lush local vegetation, with flowers, plants and trees draping the public and private spaces, terraces and rooftops of the complex. This vertical garden will not only secure a sense of continuity between the tower and its surroundings, but will offer ample protection and privacy to the residents.
Scheduled to open toward the end of 2018, Rosewood Tower was conceived as a tribute to the Atlantic Forest that lines much of Brazil’s coast. Jean Nouvel’s designsa“landscape building” that feeds into the lush local vegetation, with flowers, plants and trees draping the public and private spaces, terraces and rooftops of the complex. This vertical garden will not only secure a sense of continuity between the tower and its surroundings, but will offer ample protection and privacy to the residents.
“Matarazzo Park is a remnant. More than a remnant, I would say it’s an oasis. It’s a space of calm urbanisation. A space of incredible trees: figs and magnolias. The hospital in the middle of the grounds is a sort of mini-town, very well organised around patios. Surrounding this little gem is a chaotic metropolis. What is most interesting for me is being able to work with the memory of the place.”, says Jean Nouvel, on this, his first design for a major Latin-American city—São Paulo, which Alexandre Allard describes as a creative hub of the21st Century.
Rosewood Tower São Paulo The hotel and residential complex will include 150 guest rooms and 122 owners’ suites, two restaurants, a bar and a caviar lounge, three swimming-pools, a spa and a fitness area. This will be the international Rosewood brand’s first six-star hotel-palace in Latin America. Linked to the heritage-listed Filomena Matarazzo maternity hospital, built in 1943, the Tower is a space for living and recreation, the main artery of what Cidade Matarazzo is about to become.
For Alexandre Allard, “like Lina Bo Bardi in the 50s, Jean Nouvel brings a fresh, contemporary foreign gaze that will reveal and underscore the unique beauty of this poetic isle that has lain abandoned for over 30 years. He will rise to the challenge of innovating, of creating a modern extension that respects the heritage-listed historic buildings at the site. That’s why I chose to work with him. Jean Nouvel and I want the Matarazzo [complex] to be preserved and rejuvenated. It was saved by the residents of Bela Vista, it was protected by City Hall and the Office of Public Works until finally placed under heritage protection in 1986. Its soul nourishes us and we want to repay that by valuing this treasure in an audacious and creative way.” Of proportions that break the city’s codes of rational architectural language, this Tower, standing 300 feet high, will be an original urban landmark, opening a new chapter in the history of transformations the Paulista Avenue region has undergone since the Conjunto Nacional (one of the first multifunctional buildings in the country) was built there in the 1950s. “As I see it, architecture can be a way of improving the character of a neighbourhood or city”, Jean Nouvel once remarked, when asked about architecture’s role in transforming its surroundings. The 720 brises of the tower’s 22-floor exterior, are made of corten steel , color of the Pau Brazil, Brazil emblematic national trees that also gave his name to the tower: Rosewood.
For Maurício Linn Bianchi, director of construction at Groupe Allard, the project is innovative not only in terms of the materials used, but in the way they are produced. With a direct staff of 800 and a further 8,000 under sub-contract, the 140 thousand square meters of constructed area are revolutionising the local industry. “We’ve had to face a new challenge: where specialists account for roughly 20% of the crew on a classic construction scheme, this will be closer to 40% on the Matarazzo project. We recruited countrywide, from north to south, to put together the best available team. We’re implementing novel training and a new luxury culture that is not imported, not the market standard, but is being crafted, here and now, by Brazil’s best artisans, smiths, metalworkers and carpenters. The Matarazzo project is not just heavy construction, it’s also about painstaking restoration work”, he says.
The first four floors will be in place by December 2016, with all 22 storeys raised by April 2017.
