Edifício Itatiaia

Campinas, Brazil

Exterior only

Visible from the street; the inside is private.

Designed by Oscar Niemeyer in 1953 and completed in 1957, the Edifício Itatiaia is a Modernist apartment tower in the Centro district of Campinas, São Paulo. Standing on a trapezoid-shaped plot along Irmã Serafina Avenue, it was the city's only residential high-rise until the early 1960s and remains its first Modernist building. The structure occupies approximately 1,570 square metres and is often compared to the contemporary Copan Building in São Paulo. Now designated a protected heritage site by Campinas's municipal authorities, the Itatiaia exemplifies the early modernist residential architecture that Niemeyer brought to interior São Paulo.