Triptyque and Architects Office - AGE360 - Curitiba - Brazil

2025-02-11

Triptyque & Architects Office proposes a new typology of living spaces that combines private apartments with shared areas dedicated to the body and well-being. Inspired by ancient gymnasiums, this vision reimagines housing by integrating sports facilities, meditation spaces, and care centers, creating a harmonious ecosystem between the body, mind, and community, all within a sustainable and wellness-focused architectural framework.

"Adding the collective function of sports to a residential building is about much more than enhancing the living space: it is about redefining housing as a place of holistic growth," explains Olivier Raffaelli, co-founder of the agency. "Housing is no longer just a shelter, but becomes a framework that supports and questions the body, especially in an era marked by the acceleration of the world’s virtualization."

The tower relies on a load-bearing façade, freeing the internal spaces from structural constraints and allowing total reversibility of layouts. The structural grid is interrupted to accommodate collective spaces dedicated to sports and well-being, while its lightweight, fully glazed façade opens the interior spaces to panoramic views of Curitiba, thus connecting the residents to the outside world.

"One of the major urban challenges is to rethink the envelopes of high-rise buildings and design them according to the principle of thick façades that are both sun-protected and inhabited," adds Guillaume Sibaud, also a co-founder. "The constant relationship with outdoor spaces makes this type of living environment desirable. We sought to reduce architecture to its essentials: structure, light, sky, and the quality of the spaces. This raw simplicity, inspired by brutalism, refocuses the architectural experience on what truly matters."

At the base of the tower, the site establishes a dual interaction: a direct connection with the city at ground level, and the recreation of a space filled with dense, native vegetation, merging nature with urbanity. Its singular and elegant silhouette, designed in compliance with urban planning setbacks, redefines the skyline of Curitiba.

Illustrating the principles of psychosocial well-being, this project is the first in Brazil to receive the title of Wellness Building. It has also obtained Fitwel and Green Building Council certifications and won the Rethinking the Future award in 2022. "Every decision was guided by functionality, but resulted in something poetically integrated into the urban and natural context," concludes Greg Bousquet, founder of ARCHITECTS OFFICE.

About Triptyque + Architects Office

Triptyque is a French-Brazilian architecture and urbanism agency known for its naturalist and rationalist approach. It is led by Guillaume Sibaud and Olivier Raffaëlli, founding partners, trained at the Paris La Seine School of Architecture and the Paris Institute of Urbanism. Driven by a common interest in contemporary metropolises and the desire to confront other realities, they founded Triptyque agency in São Paulo in 2000 and in Paris in 2008.

For more than two decades, Triptyque has been developing public and private architecture, urbanism, and interior projects in Latin America and Europe in various sectors such as residential, corporate, education, hospitality, healthcare, and research. In addition, the agency has also taken part in several exhibitions and biennials. Models of some of their designs have been included in museum collections, such as the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Triptyque has also received numerous international awards and their work has been published in many countries.

About ARCHITECTS OFFICE

ARCHITECTS OFFICE is an international architecture, urbanism and interior design agency, founded by Greg Bousquet, after 21 years of a trajectory marked by projects and awards across the globe as one of the founders of Triptyque Architecture. The agency, based in Brazil, stands out for the balance between the global and the local, the technical and the artistic, city and nature by proposing spaces that promote well-being, resilient buildings, and more democratic cities.

Photo credit: Manuel Sá - Gustav Liliequist