Light, heat, and the São Paulo apartment

A São Paulo apartment renovation is a specific problem. The city sits at twenty-three degrees south of the equator. The sun angles are steep in summer, lower in winter — but there is rarely a cold day in any conventional sense. The primary challenge is not warmth but glare and heat gain.

Most apartments built in the city between 1970 and 2000 have large west-facing windows that are wonderful in the evening and nearly unusable between noon and four in the afternoon. Air-conditioning handles this in most apartments. We try to find architectural solutions instead.

On the Apartamento 27 project, the west-facing living room had three large windows. We added deep stone sills — 400mm — which reduce sky glare without blocking the view to the street. Internally, we hung a single layer of medium-weight linen on the ceiling track, which can be drawn across the windows without obscuring the view entirely. These are simple solutions, but they make a large difference to how comfortable the space is to be in during the afternoon.