Estudio Guto Requena has completed the Terrace Apartment, a biophilic and hyperconnected home in São Paulo, Brazil. The apartment is part of the Albina apartment building, an icon of Brazilian modernism designed in 1962 by Botti Rubin Arquitetos. In a conversation with Guto Requena, the architect describes the Terrace Apartment’s design and development. Requena’s own home, he sets out how the apartment is something of an experiment for his approach to architecture: a combination of biophilia, hybrid design, and parametric design. The result is, in many ways, a study in Guto Requena’s vision of the future.
The Terrace Apartment
“I’ve been dating this building since college and it doesn’t have a balcony, so I said let’s turn the apartment into a big balcony,” says Requena. “As a student of architecture, I came to take pictures of the Albina building. It’s a beautiful example of Brutalist and Paulista Modernist architecture. The Paulista School is representative of modernism in São Paulo in the 1960s.”
“When I was looking for an apartment to buy with my husband, it was important to find a place with a veranda — a terrace,” says Requena. “This apartment has no terrace, but we fell in love immediately because of the sunrise and sunset that comes directly inside the building, the view, and the many qualities concerning the space. That’s how the concept started — we said ‘there is no veranda, there is no terrace, so let’s transform the entire apartment into a big veranda — let’s live inside a veranda.’”
Radical biophilia
Looking around his apartment, Requena remarks that “the plants are taking over…” For the architect, São Paulo is a very interesting city. It has one of the world’s fastest-growing metropolitan populations and is the largest city in the southern hemisphere. The city itself has a population of more than 12 million people and in the wider metropolitan area, more than 22 million people.“It’s a bit overwhelming in this concrete jungle. There are not enough green areas or parks,” says Requena. “It’s been an experience because I was raised in a tiny countryside city in São Paulo state. I grew up with nature — horses, cows, birds. Now I live in São Paulo city and I love it, but as I’m not able to go back to nature at this moment in my life, bringing nature inside my apartment has had an incredibly positive impact on my inner self. So I live in this apartment, in this concrete jungle, but my home has an ecosystem of ladybugs, butterflies, worms, little reptiles and spiders, even birds will appear. It’s absolutely insane — I had no idea this would happen. I don’t know how they come, but I want to do a series of pictures on how nature finds its way into nature. It’s quite impressive.”
Between seeing photographs of the apartment and looking at the space during our video call (the plants have been growing exponentially since the photos were taken), it’s a wonderfully intriguing home. “Many people ask, ‘Guto, isn’t it a lot of work to maintain the apartment?’ — yes, it is,” says the architect. “It’s a lot of work because it’s life and life means lots of work, otherwise you lose life. Things are automatically controlled. I have two systems that take care of watering the plants, but even with support from the technology, there’s much to do. I love it — it’s like a meditation, a daily ritual. It’s like living on a farm or in a house, but in an apartment.”
The apartment enjoys its own private biome. It has its own specific microclimate, the wide array of vegetation helping to reduce high temperatures and improve air quality. “I call it ‘Radical Biophilia’ — I’ve been trying to understand more about biophilia over the past ten years,” says Requena. “Since starting a very big corporate project — the new Google headquarters in São Paulo — it was the first time we convinced such a big client to use lots of greenery inside the office space. And now, especially after the Covid-19 pandemic, there are lots of scientific articles proving that having plants in the office or at home helps with the immune system. People have fewer allergies and headaches, and a better quality of breathing because there is more oxygen in the space. I’m really curious about biophilia, especially in the context of Latin America where we don’t have enough green in big metropolises like São Paulo."
The Terrace Apartment is a home, a place to work, and a place to entertain. First-time visitors are doubtless curious. “When people visit the apartment, I love seeing their reaction. Usually the first reaction is ‘wow’. It’s something they cannot necessarily explain, but they typically feel energized, calmer, less stressed,” says Requena. “It’s less about the physical perception and more about the subjective and cognitive — an inner energy that results from the apartment’s atmosphere.”
“Working with my team, we are carrying out more and more research into biophilia. We understand that it’s not only about ‘green’, but also about having more nature around you — rock, earth, bamboo, texture. This is all related to the well-being of the inner space,” says Requena. “From a practical viewpoint, we have been experimenting with biophilia in recent years, especially in corporate spaces. It’s an experimental approach with some academic background.”
Hybrid architecture
In the Terrace Apartment, the physical and virtual worlds combine to create a hybrid space. Guto Requena has written a book on hybrid architecture: Habitar híbrido: subjetividades e arquitetura do lar na era digital (Hybrid habitation: subjectivities and home in the digital age). “I started my studies in architecture in 1999 at the University of São Paulo,” he says. “I was fascinated by modernism and concrete, by Oscar Niemeyer and Le Corbusier. But that was also the year I got my first email, my first social networks — 1999 was the year that I found a deeper connection with the internet.” For Requena, these two universes, at that point in time, were entirely discrete. He experienced it as something of a crisis. “I was intrigued by this digital world that was taking over my own life. I found answers in a research group at the university called ‘Nomads.Usp’— the Center for Interactive Living Studies [part of the Institute of Architecture and Urbanism at the University of São Paulo]. It’s a well-known academic research group. I was a part of the group for nine years, during my first degree and then my master’s degree. It was the place where I felt comfortable and could start developing research that I called ‘Hybrid Architecture’.”
For Requena, since that time and as part of his ongoing practice, he has found it important to show that architecture is not just about the analogue world. It is not only about bricks, concrete, glass, and wood: the physical materiality of a building. “I understood how important it was to combine the digital sphere — network cables, microcontrollers, LED lights — with the analogue in order to create a different experience for the user,” he explains. “I’m investigating, for example, how we can create emotive spaces — spaces that react to the way we feel. I’ve been hacking many different types of hardware, including brain activity sensors, voice sensors, and heartbeat sensors. I have a laboratory in my studio and we have computer scientists who have been working with us for around five years. This has given me an entirely new perspective of my work and of its many possibilities. I feel my practice has taken a new and exciting step forward.”
Using hybrid architecture, Estudio Guto Requena is developing different types of experiments, from small and large installations to interactive furniture. Notable examples from the studio, in which design interacts with technology, include the “Dancing Pavilion” at Rio de Janeiro’s 2016 Olympic Games and “Mapped Empathies”, a project that explores the possibilities of adding new poetic layers into urban furniture.
“For me it is less about the technology and hardware, but more about how we create experiences to improve empathy,” says Requena. “At the beginning of a project, we can think about how a space can work to improve empathy and connectivity. Now, more and more, it makes a lot of sense to me because we are living in an era of hate, in a country [Brazil] that is still very divided. Working with my students and in my own practice, we try to create experiments where we can improve the empathy levels of people.”
Thinking about how this hybrid approach relates to the Terrace Apartment, Requena says: “It’s a modernist building and the apartment has an incredible floor plan [280 square meters – 3,014 square feet]. The original floor plan reflected the bourgeois residential tripartition, something that originated in the 18th century and divides the house into social, intimate, and service areas. This makes no sense nowadays. In Brazil, for example, all of the buildings from this era had dorm rooms in the back for employees, something from the times of colonialism and slavery. Modernist ideals kept these rooms for employees. I wanted to literally destroy these walls and destroy this old idea of what a house is.”
Requena’s design removed all of the walls to create a much more flexible architecture and atmosphere. “I know it’s nothing new and we’ve been developing flexible interiors for almost 100 years now,” he says. “I tell my students that I think designing a house is less about designing a bedroom, kitchen, or living room, and it’s more about designing the activities — hosting friends, working, having fun, cooking. Having a flexible space allowed me to think about the activities in the home. I created a space that is much more social because it is integrated.”
Three principles
Guto Requena describes three principles that relate to the Terrace Apartment’s design: The first is having a flexible home. The second is having a biophilic home. The third is having a connected home. “Bringing back nature to my own life, experimenting with it, is something quite radical that I’ve never tried in a residential home. I decided to try it out on myself and if it works, to then propose it to my clients. Coupled with the biophilic approach, this is a very technologically-driven apartment. When we were redoing the space, we had to use almost three kilometers (1.87 miles) of network cables. Now, the curtains, TV, cinema, air-conditioning, power plugs, lights, water… everything is automatic. I can control the house using Alexa, my phone, or the special keypads I have around the home.”
“I was experimenting with what it means to live in a connected home, to see if the investment is worth it and what works. It has now been one-and-a-half years since completing the project and I have some criticisms, but in general terms I love it. I’m now a happier person living here. When I gather friends and everyone is together, it makes a lot of sense to have all of this green, the ability to play with the technology, and the flexibility.”
Parametric design
A passion for Estudio Guto Requena, the studio defines parametric design as “using algorithms to set rules and parameters that will define the relations between project concept and result.”
“I’m very fascinated about using algorithms to shape architecture and to shape design. In the past seven or eight years, I’ve been using conventional drawing less and less. I’m more interested in growing shapes through algorithms,” says Requena. “The Delírios Armchair is one example of parametric design — it was digitally designed using parametric waffle programming. A wooden panel that acts as a transition between the collective areas of the apartment and more intimate ones was created using algorithms. It is a homage to the brise-soleil on the Albina building’s facade. I got the original drawings from the architect and scanned these to create an algorithm that reproduces the way in which the sun moves across the front of the apartment. It’s how we shaped the graphic pattern and it is very beautiful. People see the connections with the outside, they see it as a homage to the original architecture.”
For Requena, incorporating design methods such as parametric design was important to experimenting with the Terrace Apartment and he wants to go bigger. “We no longer work with concrete and for three years have been researching work with timber, earth, and bamboo. Now I’m trying to combine the technological approach to architecture with these organic materials. I think there is something special coming from this and truly Brazilian.”
A vision of the future
In a home that uses a great deal of technology, there might be a tendency to question its impact on tactility and emotion, to wonder if it’s in any way cold. Requena explains that for him, it’s about a desire to create and work with technology that warms and connects people. “I believe that technology is integrated with love and this is what I experiment with,” he says. “As a practical example, the Heart Wall is a poetic object, like a sculpture, that I designed. It’s simple but effective. There are seven different cocoons and each one is blinking with the heartbeat of someone I love. There is a bpm sensor that the person touches. So when my grandmother came to visit and my mother, for example, they touched the sensor with their finger and their heartbeat was recorded. At night in particular, I can literally see their heartbeat and remember the people I love.”
“Another example is the Love Project, a series of 3D printed objects that I’ve been developing since 2014. I invite guests and ask them to narrate the biggest love story of their life. I plug sensors into their body — neural, heartbeat, and voice — leaving them alone to narrate their love story. I collect the biofeedback and this data is used to print 3D objects, such as a fruit bowl or vase, thereby making the intangible tangible. These are two small examples of how I’ve been trying to approach technology.”
Requena’s Heart Wall and Love Project are among the many objects he has created within the Terrace Apartment. “I would say that concerning the home itself, it is not cold — it is quite the opposite,” he remarks. "The way I approach technology in my apartment is with a lot of warmth. And I’ve also realized that I don’t want to use my phone to control the home anymore. I can do it, but this is something very cold. Instead, I have a keypad with different types of atmospheres, including a meditation setting for yoga or a club setting for dancing.”
“Without sounding arrogant, I feel I want to try to build a vision of the future here: my vision of the future. And of course it’s very personal because it’s my own home. As an architect I can experiment. My vision of the future home is not something that’s minimalistic or aesthetic, it’s not white — this is especially because I’m Brazilian. I understand that minimalism is a very important cultural and social movement, but in terms of residential spaces, particularly from the perspective of Brazilian people, we are not minimalists.” Requena very much admires the minimal-style architecture from places in the world such as Scandinavia, but believes Brazilian people have a different perspective.
“My vision of the future is a home with lots of plants, a hug, imperfections, my dogs, many memories — memories from my childhood, my grandmother. A home is a place of memories. But, very much connected with technology,” he says.
