Drawing from a collection of contemporary artworks — including original pieces by one of the residents, who is also an artist — the Esplanada Rosa Apartment, designed by BLOCO Arquitetos, an architecture office based in Brasília, Brazil, was conceived to create a bright, light, and open environment, in keeping with the clients' wishes.
The residents have a close relationship with the visual arts and have built a significant toy art collection. Paintings, sculptures, and objects were incorporated into the project through surfaces and niches designed to display the pieces in seamless integration with each room.
Located in a newly built building, the apartment was delivered by the developer without finishing, which allowed for a complete renovation without the need for demolition or structural work, avoiding material waste.
Color appears sparingly but intentionally. The powder room, entirely clad in shades of pink, serves as a chromatic counterpoint to the rest of the apartment, which is predominantly neutral. Fixtures, hardware, and surfaces all follow the same hue, creating a monochromatic space. This choice, combined with other pink accents distributed throughout the home, gives the apartment its name: Apartamento Esplanada Rosa (pink, in Portuguese).
The material palette is restrained and cohesive, with few surface treatments and easy-to-maintain solutions. A continuous monolithic floor was used throughout all spaces, including the bathrooms, eliminating visual transitions and reinforcing a sense of unity and openness. This choice foregrounds the collection built over the years, which brings together works by different artists, including names from Brasília.
The layout and large openings encourage cross ventilation and natural light, contributing to the apartment's light and fluid atmosphere. The kitchen was integrated into the living area and organized around a large white ribbed panel that consolidates and conceals different access points and functional elements of the space. The design accommodates doors of varying sizes — refrigerator, cabinets, main entrance, and powder room — composing a single continuous plane that reinforces the unity of the rooms.
Plaster ceilings were limited to the kitchen, bathrooms, and service area. In the remaining spaces, the concrete slab was left exposed, with infrastructure organized to remain visible, celebrating the original structure and allowing greater flexibility for future technical interventions.
