Spatial Richness

Nature is almost always a major component of any landscape design and this never fails to make a connection by stimulating our senses. In this new park designed by Balmori Associates, all the bodily senses of sight, touch, hearing and movement come together to deliver a powerful experience.

The world’s third largest metropolis, Sao Paulo in Brazil is an urban innovation. Here, surrounded by concrete, glass, tar, metal and steel structures it is easy to forget nature. While the city’s round-the-clock pulse is a close cousin of New York’s or Tokyo’s, it seems to be missing an essential organic layer, cloaked by the urban fabric that it wears. The grey roofs are very raw and exposed to the elements. Balmori Associates explain, “When we look at the city’s rooftops with high vantage points, we see enormous latent potential and surfaces that invite a very rational solution for making cities more livable, sustainable and pleasant.”

In order to incorporate nature into the urbanites’ lives the team very adeptly integrated landscape into architecture. Located in the affluent neighborhood of Vila Olimpia and spread across 4 hectares, the new park designed by Balmori Associates at Sao Paulo Corporate Towers celebrates the Mata Atlantica Rainforest’s biodiversity and spatial richness in the dense concrete jungle of Sao Paulo.

When it comes to landscape design, the question of spatial continuity always crops up. Balmori says, “To blur the site boundaries and integrate the park with the city an undulating fence curved in plan and elevation weaves through the landscape.”

Driven by the character of the Mata Atlantica, the design responds to the special site location. The topography lends an opportunity to use the creation, syncopation and unfolding of space to create provocative sequences that offer surprises at regular intervals.