Ibaté is a residential tower defined by its exposed structure: ribbed, warm-toned concrete façades that serve as a visual and thermal base for vertical landscaping. With floor-to-ceiling openings and brass-finish guardrails, the continuous perimeter terraces on each 450 sqm unit are modulated with alternating planters, creating volumetric variation, shading, and contrast between materiality and greenery. The glazed, fence-free ground floor works as an open antechamber to the city, strengthening the building’s role as a transition into the neighborhood. Sustainable features include cross-ventilation, solar panels, water reuse, and EV charging.
The project is guided by a desire to merge permanence and transformation, solidity and growth, precision and porosity. Its conceptual foundation lies in the expressive use of materiality – the exposed, ribbed, warm-toned concrete façades that reveal rather than conceal the building’s structural essence. This raw, tactile surface is not softened but intentionally contrasted with the organic vitality of vertical gardens, which reclaim the architecture with vegetation and speak to the urgency of a greener city.
Rather than repeating itself floor after floor, the 100-meters-high building introduces subtle shifts in its terraces and planters, generating volumetric variation, natural shading, and dynamic rhythms of light and shadow. This modulation breaks from the monotony often found in vertical housing and gives the architecture a sense of movement; an evolving presence rather than a static object.
Situated on a corner lot between São Paulo’s dense urban spine and the quieter, residential neighborhood of Vila Nova Conceição, Ibaté interprets its context through mediation. The glazed, fence-free ground floor dissolves boundaries between public and private, functioning as an open antechamber to the city and reinforcing transparency as a civic gesture.
Through contrast, modulation, and openness, Ibaté reframes the relationship between structure and landscape, between the vertical and the organic. It is not conceived as an isolated landmark, but as a living fragment of the city. In doing so, it reclaims the tower typology as a generous, integrated part of the urban fabric.
