{"id":268905,"date":"2025-12-19T11:47:17","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T16:47:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/interiordesign.net\/?post_type=canvasflow&p=268905"},"modified":"2025-12-19T11:47:18","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T16:47:18","slug":"pascali-semerdjian-arquitetos-sao-paulo-home","status":"publish","type":"id_project","link":"https:\/\/interiordesign.net\/projects\/pascali-semerdjian-arquitetos-sao-paulo-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Pascali Semerdjian Arquitetos Crafts A Modern Home With Global Flair In S\u00e3o Paulo"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n
\"A
For a newly built home in S\u00e3o Paolo by Pascali Semerdjian Arquitetos, a custom concrete screen based on cobog\u00f3, or classic Brazilian breezeblock, offers privacy for the rooftop desert garden.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n

December 19, 2025<\/p>\n\n\n

Words: <\/span>Michael Snyder<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photography: <\/span>Fran Parente<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Pascali Semerdjian Arquitetos Crafts A Modern Home With Global Flair In S\u00e3o Paulo<\/h1>\n\n\n

Before she met Domingos Pascali and Sarkis Semerdjian, the architects who would spend four years on her family\u2019s recently completed S\u00e3o Paulo home, and even before she started her year-long search for the elusive piece of land on which to build it, the art educator and entrepreneur, Andrea Guerra, fell in love with a small table they\u2019d designed. That piece, with its slender stone top and undulant, ribbed base in stainless steel, was part of a 2018 capsule collection by Pascali Semerdjian Arquitetos<\/a> for the prominent S\u00e3o Paulo furniture gallery Etel. \u201cI was the first person to have it,\u201d Guerra recalls, still delighted by the coincidence. \u201cMine was number-one out of the factory.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guerra didn\u2019t meet Pascali and Semerdjian until two years later, as she interviewed firms for the house project, but the rapport was immediate. Guerra was as interested in the building itself as she was in the furnishings and objects that would fill it, equal components of Pascali and Semerdjian\u2019s eponymous practice. \u201cIn those first meetings, we spoke about literature and art and music,\u201d Pascali recalls. \u201cWhen you have a greater affinity, a stronger connection, with a client, that translates to greater liberty and a more unified architecture.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pascali Semerdjian Arquitetos Highlights Brazilian Craft In This Home<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"A
For a newly built home in S\u00e3o Paolo by Pascali Semerdjian Arquitetos, a custom concrete screen based on cobog\u00f3, or classic Brazilian breezeblock, offers privacy for the rooftop desert garden.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Guerra and her husband had been in their previous home in the leafy Jardim Europa neighborhood for 15 years and, when they realized they simply needed more space, they\u2019d initially hoped to find a turnkey in the same neighborhood or, at worst, a house they could renovate. When nothing appeared, they settled for a level, well-proportioned lot with a neocolonial house they felt no qualms about demolishing. For the new project, Guerra sought spaces that would support, rather than distract from, her growing art collection and, though she knew she wanted to avoid replicating the suspended wooden boxes that have proliferated around S\u00e3o Paulo\u2019s affluent areas, she also \u201cdidn\u2019t want something that would stand out in the middle of the street.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pascali and Semerdjian\u2019s solution to Guerra\u2019s brief emerged almost immediately. The house would list toward the western edge of the rectangular lot, opening an L-shaped garden at street level. Upstairs, three bedrooms, each with its own bath, a small gym, and the main bedroom suite would occupy five interconnected volumes turned at 45-degree angles, like prisms, over the ground floor\u2019s footprint in order to face due north, the sunniest exposure in the southern hemisphere. That gesture broke up the 7,800-square-foot house\u2019s massing and created a natural setback from the road, which the architects emphasized with a freestanding breezeblock partition, or Brazilian cobog\u00f3, <\/em><\/em>of prefabricated concrete capsules fit together like oversized chainmail. From the street, the residence would resolve as a horizontal band of aluminum, almost maritime in its streamlined simplicity, with the concrete screen rising above it like a widow\u2019s walk, providing privacy for the bedrooms. The sawtooth upper level also opened apertures for skylights and interior gardens on the ground floor while generating \u201cspaces that would reveal themselves as you move through the house,\u201d Semerdjian says\u2014an element of surprise that Guerra had requested from the beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Globally Inspired Spin On Brazilian Design<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"A
Back in the living room, a custom coumarou bench presides over Baobab slipper chairs by Lievore Altherr Molina, Yuzu armchairs by Claesson Koivisto Rune, Gianfranco Frattini\u2019s Grand Sesann sofa, and Leonardo Lague\u2019s Solaris cocktail table.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Turning to the interiors, she, Pascali, and Semerdjian drew inspiration from Japanese and Mexican architecture with their emphases on material simplicity, formal clarity, and blurred boundaries between nature and built space. Those references are visible in the foyer, where basalt flooring and the sucupira ceiling beams and door, almost squared in its proportions, recall the elegant rusticity of Mexican master Luis Barrag\u00e1n<\/a>. The entry hall then opens into a broad corridor, conceived as an elongated white-cube gallery connecting Guerra\u2019s office to the luminous living room, where the Pascali Semerdjian side table stands next to a rust-colored sofa by Italian architect Gianfranco Frattini, adding a global note. An open hearth separates the living room from the dining room, flanked by a terrace on one side\u2014here, Pascali and Semerdjian conceived a custom bench that will enter their collection with Andrea\u2019s name\u2014and, on the other, an interior garden where parlor palms brush against a hanging stainless-steel work by S\u00e3o Paulo sculptor Renata Padovan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though Guerra and her family brought a clutch of items from their previous home\u2014a pair of high-backed Cant\u00fa chairs by another Brazilian talent, Sergio Rodrigues, for instance, and a wooden stool that belonged to her grandparents\u2014they mostly started from scratch, allowing Pascali and Semerdjian to integrate architecture and interiors. As Semerdjian says, \u201cSometimes you can\u2019t resolve a space through moveable pieces\u2014the architecture and furniture have to go together.\u201d Here, that meant emphasizing flexibility in the public spaces with stand-alone furnishings from such contemporary Brazilian designers as Leonardo Lague, Claudia Moreira Salles, and Fernando Prado, and crafting the private quarters around freijo built-ins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Off the dining room and from the swimming pool in the ground-floor garden, the jagged facade of the upper floor reveals itself.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Sliding panels in another wood, weather-resistant Accoya, shield the glass doors that open from the bedrooms onto a rooftop garden. Rather than the tropical proliferation of broad-leafed philodendrons and calatheas typical of S\u00e3o Paulo gardens, Guerra had the roof planted with native grasses, euphorbias, and mother-in-law\u2019s tongue, an austere, slow-growing landscape inspired by Mexican garden design that connects Guerra and her family to distant worlds and experiences. \u201cIt is the first thing I see when I wake up each morning and always makes me happy,\u201d she says: the surprise of an alien beauty, which is also, always, a quiet provocation to explore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Walk Through This Minimalist Home With A Desert Garden Twist<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"A
Clad in aluminum-composite panels, the 7,800-square-foot house appears modest as seen from the street.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n
\n
\"A
Under a sucupira pergola in the entry hall, basalt flooring forms the stair\u2019s treads and risers.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
\"A
The cobog\u00f3<\/em> is 8 feet high by 38 wide.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"A
Gathered around the living room\u2019s fireplace is an array of Brazilian talent: PL61 armchairs by Percival Lafer, Pascali Semerdjian\u2019s D\u00e9 magazine stand, and a Sergio Romangolo painting (the rustic stool belonged to the client\u2019s grandparents).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

International Roots Shape This\u00a0Home By Pascali Semerdjan Arquitetos<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"A
Also wide at 13 feet, a window overlooks the staircase connecting the ground floor to the four bedrooms upstairs and reveals the rotated volumes that allow natural light to reach an internal patio.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n
\n
\"A
Pieces by more Brazilians\u2014Sergio Rodrigues\u2019s Cant\u00fa chairs and artwork by Luciana Kater\u2014define the home office, with custom desk and cabinetry and a lacquered floor.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
\"A
Above Brazilian photographer Luiza L. Lavorato\u2019s diptych in the powder room, with custom sink in Verde Guatemala marble, a ventilated skylight allows live sansevieria plants to thrive.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
\n
\"A
The dining room\u2019s Josefina chairs by Fernando Prado.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
\"A
A custom banquette and table with Quadros chairs and a vintage pendant fixture in the breakfast nook.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
\"A
A skylight\u2019s shape echoing profiles of the house. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
\n
\"A
A custom bed and headboard in the main bedroom complement a Sopro bench from Pascali Semerdjian\u2019s design brand, PSDS, and a Puffer armchair by Mula Preta.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
\"A
In her bathroom, the custom sink and vanity are composed of Tauari wood and Paran\u00e1 White marble, both materials native to Brazil.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"A
The basalt terrace off the living room centers on the Andrea bench, named after the client and now produced by Brazilian gallery Etel, while the Sands and Lacuna chairs are by Fulvio Nanni (left) \u00a0and Claudia Moreira Salles.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
project team<\/h6><\/div>\n\n\n\n

PASCALI SEMERDJIAN ARQUITETOS:<\/strong> F\u00c1BIO RUDNIK; RODRIGO GUERRA; SUZANA KNOBEL; TALI LIBERMAN; INA\u00ca NEGR\u00c3O; LEOPOLDO SCHETTINO; JO\u00c3O PAULO MACHADO; GABRIELA MOURAD; AINE OLIVEIRA. RENATA TILLI:<\/strong> LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT. CONSTRUMAR:<\/strong> CIVIL ENGINEER. D\u2019FRAN\u00c7A M\u00d3VEIS:<\/strong> WOODWORK. DIX METAIS:<\/strong> METALWORK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

product sources<\/h6><\/div>\n\n\n\n

FROM FRONT
TRESUNO:<\/strong> CUSTOM SCREEN (ROOF GARDEN). BALI MADEIRAS:<\/strong> PERGOLA (ENTRY HALL). PHENICIA CONCEPT:<\/strong> RUG (LIVING ROOM). TOQUE FINAL CORTINAS:<\/strong> CURTAINS. TACCHINI:<\/strong> SLIPPER CHAIRS, SOFA. ARFLEX:<\/strong> ARMCHAIRS. SANTA & COLE:<\/strong> LAMP. TABLERIA:<\/strong> CUSTOM BENCH. MICASA:<\/strong> COCKTAIL TABLE (LIVING ROOM), TABLE (DINING ROOM). ETEL:<\/strong> MAGAZINE STAND (LIVING ROOM), BENCH (TERRACE). DPOT:<\/strong> CHAIRS (DINING ROOM, TERRACE). OVO:<\/strong> CHAIRS (BREAKFAST NOOK). MULA PRETA:<\/strong> CHAIR (BEDROOM). PSDS:<\/strong> BENCH. LABLUZ:<\/strong> SCONCES (BATHROOM). DECA:<\/strong> SINK FITTINGS, TUB FILLER. VALLV\u00c9:<\/strong> TUB. CASA ATICA: TABLE (TERRACE). PUNTO:<\/strong> SINK FITTINGS (POWDER ROOM). VIDROS QUEIROZ:<\/strong> CUSTOM MIRROR. THROUGHOUT EUROMARBLE:<\/strong> STONE FLOORING. LUMISYSTEM:<\/strong> CUSTOM WINDOWS. STO CORP.:<\/strong> PAINT.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n