Pavilion Tess by Estúdio Leonardo Zanatta

Pavilion Tess stands as an architectural meditation on structural clarity, spatial rhythm, and passive performance. Designed by Estúdio Leonardo Zanatta and located in the Brooklin neighborhood of São Paulo, the pavilion adopts a formally restrained yet conceptually rich approach that reflects a sensitive response to climate, urban context, and civic potential. Originally conceived as a commercial space, the building seamlessly transforms into a mixed-use cultural infrastructure—a discreet beacon of openness, community, and possibility.

Passive Strategies and Thermal Autonomy

The core of Pavilion Tess’s design revolves around passive environmental performance. A defining feature is its autonomous flat roof slab, structurally detached from the enclosed volumes below. This decoupling allows for uninterrupted airflow, promoting continuous natural ventilation while maintaining permanent shading across the entire footprint. The result is a microclimate beneath the roof that mitigates heat, reduces reliance on mechanical systems, and enhances thermal comfort year-round.

Openings were precisely positioned to allow for solar gain during winter while minimizing direct sun exposure in summer, showcasing a thoughtful balance of solar orientation and energy efficiency. In this sense, the pavilion becomes both shelter and machine—engineered to breathe with its environment.

Structural Expression as Spatial Poetry

The architectural language of Pavilion Tess is rooted in rhythmic expression and formal economy. Its metallic structural system, featuring slender vertical columns and tensioned support elements, evokes the visual lightness of a harp—an image that directly influenced the spatial framework. The structure is intentionally exposed, left unclad to reveal its honest construction logic, emphasizing transparency in both material and intention.

This structural rhythm operates not just as a technical solution, but as a spatial organizer—a matrix upon which the composition of internal volumes unfolds. Under the generous roof plane, architecture becomes transparent and fluid, with no hard edge between interior and exterior. The result is a pavilion that blurs thresholds, offering shaded transitional spaces and fostering a sense of constant permeability.

Suprematist Spatial Composition

Beneath the orthogonal grid of the roof, the building’s volumetric composition draws inspiration from Russian Suprematism, particularly its embrace of primary geometric forms and visual tension through juxtaposition. The arrangement of enclosed masses—fragments of rectilinear geometry—is both abstract and intentional. Their placement avoids symmetry or repetition, favoring a dynamic interplay of orientation, scale, and negative space.

This approach produces an ever-shifting perception of the building, depending on the vantage point. As one moves around Pavilion Tess, its form continuously transforms, revealing new alignments and tensions—a quality that turns the building into an architectural composition in motion.

Contextual Respect and Urban Subtlety

Brooklin, a largely residential district, shaped the pavilion’s horizontal, low-profile implantation. Avoiding bulky massing or vertical assertion, the design responds to its urban context with deliberate humility. The architectural presence is light, restrained, and non-imposing, allowing the pavilion to merge with the surrounding built fabric while maintaining a distinct identity.

Visual fluidity replaces monumentality. The spatial strategy privileges openness over enclosure, resulting in a built form that communicates accessibility, discretion, and architectural silence. In this way, Pavilion Tess becomes not just a building but an urban gesture of quiet generosity.

Mixed-Use Potential and Community Engagement

While originally designed for commercial use, Pavilion Tess expands its scope to function as a flexible cultural venue—hosting rotating exhibitions, art installations, and community gatherings. This programmatic openness was embedded from the outset, with the architecture consciously resisting spatial hierarchy. Public and private realms interlace, enabling a seamless flow of commerce, culture, and social interaction.

By activating its site without dominating it, Pavilion Tess acts as a subtle catalyst for urban engagement. It is both platform and participant—a structure that invites occupation, adaptation, and reinterpretation. Its design envisions architecture not as an endpoint, but as a beginning: a framework for community, creativity, and civic exchange.

A Pavilion of Lightness and Possibility

In Pavilion Tess, formal discipline meets poetic abstraction, and structural logic intersects with civic ambition. Its restrained material palette, rhythmic composition, and passive environmental strategies culminate in a work of contemporary relevance and timeless calm. Here, architecture does not shout—it resonates softly, activating its surroundings without disrupting them. Pavilion Tess is a study in how lightness, transparency, and spatial generosity can redefine the architectural role within a dense, evolving city.

Photography: André Scarpa