STAR architect Jean Nouvel’s latest project for the Brazilian city of Sao Paolo encapsulates “the built environment invaded by nature”, the Pritzker Prize winner told delegates in Cannes on Thursday. Designed with floating terraces draped in greenery and clad in wood, the Mata Atlantica Tower represents the pinnacle of the ambitious Cidade Materazzo scheme, conceived by French billionaire Alexandre Allard.
Designed as a high-end luxury residence and Rosewood hotel, with mixed-use elements on the ground floor, Nouvel’s creation has an organic aspect from a distance, the architect said. “A key design aspect is allowing the trees to invade the building just as they have invaded the surrounding park.”
Cidade Materazzo is a literal oasis in the middle of the urban jungle, according to Nouvel, comprising the sympathetic refurbishment of an abandoned maternity hospital encircled by a heritage habitat. “I wanted to make this building a part of the general history of Materazzo. It is a tower, but it has more in common with the surviving structure of the hospital surrounded by centenary trees, than it does with the brutal towers of the city.”
The €400m Cidade Materazzo occupies 45,000 sq m of space in downtown Sao Paolo, including a retail village with 34 F&B units and 70 fashion brands, plus a biodiversity boulevard, the Millennials hotel and a tech campus.
This and more in the MIPIM News Issue 4; read it in full here…!
