Firm： Arquitectonica

Type： Commercial › Office Retail Shopping Mall Hospitality + Sport › Hotel

STATUS： Built

YEAR： 2012

Photos： Romulo Fialdini (2)

The JK Iguatemi Mall is part of the larger Mixed-Use, Hospitality, Office, Retail, Banking and Transportation project in one of the most prominent regions of Sao Paulo, Brazil. It was designed to be the most luxurious mall in the financial heart of São Paulo, appealing to the demographics of its district and offices. The four-story building contains 390,000 square feet of leasable space, with 190 shops, a food court, nine restaurants, and a cinema.

Suspended glass “skylight” panel walls ensure maximum exposure to natural light, and integrate the contemporary mall with its surrounding urban environment of the Parque do Povo. Transparency to the exterior was a deliberate move away from malls entirely closed off to their natural surroundings. It is an attempt to make the mall part of the city and relate it to its sidewalks and streets.

The design captures a broad trend toward daylighting, invoking the feeling of being outdoors, which is enhanced by the crisp, pure forms accented with natural materials like wood. Another is true access to outdoor spaces such as dining terraces. The design was geared toward energy efficiency, with wide spaces and light-colored floors to maximize natural light, and sensors to govern automated air-conditioning systems with the goal of reducing the mall’s carbon footprint.

This project also includes several infrastructure improvements, such as the construction of new lanes on the perimeter roadways, and the delivery of a 4.8-mile long bike path known as the “ciclopassarela” linking the People’s Park to the regional bike path.

Though a relatively small retail mall, the tenants are 100% luxury brands who are drawn to luxurious sense of space and grand materials in both public areas and tenant areas. Brazilian craftsmanship makes high design and attention to detail possible.