New buildings in Brazil want place among the highest in the world

SAO PAULO (Reuters)-The project of what promises to be the highest residential building in the world will be launched on May 10 in the Santa Catarina city of Balneário Camboriú, a region famous for its skyscrapers and for housing the most expensive square meter in the country.

Called Senna Tower, the venture should be 509 meters high, which will overcome the 294 meters of Yachthouse by Pininfarina, also in Balneário Camboriú, currently the highest residential in Brazil, and the 435 meters of Steinway Tower in New York, currently the highest residential in the world, according to international ranking of Skyscrapper Center.

The building is a project of the FG Group – with an expected investment of R $ 3 billion – and is being played in partnership with the Havan department store chain, from Santa Catarina businessman Luciano Hang. The FG group is controlled by Francisco Graciola and Jean Graciola, father and son, traditional construction entrepreneurs of Santa Catarina.

At Senna Tower, apartments could cost up to $ 200 million, according to FG. The building will have 228 apartments, including 18 suspended mansions from 420 to 563 square meters, 204 up to 400 square meters, four 600 square meters duplex toppings and two 903 square meters triplex cover.

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Residencial Senna Tower will have apartments of up to $ 200 million in Balneário Camboriú

The company did not give details about prices, but considering the value of $ 200 million, the square meter in the venture can come out for $ 500 thousand. According to FG, there is demand for units in the building since its announcement in September last year, although the company does not disclose the volume sold so far.

“I see that this (verticalization) is an irretivable process in Brazil, (but) is a backward process compared to large reference cities, such as New York, Singapore, London and other large urban centers,” said Stéphane Domeneghini, executive director of the FG group high buildings, Talls Solutions, and technical responsible for Senna Tower Project.

According to data from Skyscrapper Center, of the 10 largest skyscrapers in Brazil, eight are in Balneário Camboriú. In the list that brings together the largest buildings in the world, of the 100 largest Brazilians, 62 have been erected in the last decade, most for residential use.

“The process is recent, mainly, because the legal means are recent in Brazil,” said Domeneghini, citing the City Statute, created in 2001, which established guidelines for the national urban policy, including the master plans.

According to the expert, the statute gave “freedom” to cities to attract investments by expanding the constructive potential – relationship between the land area and the area that can be built – due to the payment of grants, and a resort was one of the exponents of this movement, driven by its spatial limitation and high population demand.

Racing to the skies

But the search for larger heights is not restricted to Balneario Camboriú. In Sao Paulo, the developer WTorre, responsible for projects such as Allianz Parque Stadium and JK Iguatemi mall, is building what promises to be the largest corporate building in the state, 219 meters high, in partnership with Carrefour Property, Carrefour Brazil Group Real Estate Management and Development Unit (CRFB3).

The building is being erected at the Paseo Alto das Nações complex, on the outskirts of Marginal Pinheiros, south of São Paulo, and is expected to launch in the first half of 2026. The venture will be higher than the Platinum 220 building, currently the largest skyscraper in São Paulo, 172 meters, opened in 2022 in the Tatuapé region of São Paulo.

For Marco Siqueira, WTORRE’s executive president, logistics factors were one of the reasons for the magnitude of the building, but also its “differential” to the address.

“We know that building tall towers, which offer different views… .The also attractive,” said Siqueira. “Nearby, none has this differential of being the highest,” he added.

But Igor Melro, commercial director of Construtora Porte, responsible for Platinum 220, is calm to lose his lead in São Paulo.

“We have no goal of a competition point of view,” Melro told Reuters. “The company was born in the east zone, chose to develop the east zone and transform the region… We aim to retain these people who prospered in the region, so that we can maintain this ecosystem.”

According to Melro, the Platinum 220 project was designed to offer more office options, high standard residentials and other spaces of need of the region and surpassed “unintentionally” in two meters that was the largest building in São Paulo for almost half a century, the Vale Mirante, in the city center.

“The region needed each of these uses and the best solution turned out to be this,” he said. Currently, platinum 220 has about 72% of the units occupied and the size already plans other projects for the Tatuapé region, which include sectors ranging from hospitality, retail, teaching and entertainment.

Sorocabano Challenge

In Sorocaba, in the interior of São Paulo, Mayor Rodrigo Manga (Republicans) says he wants to build the largest building in the world, surpassing Burj Khalifa, in the Emirates, with a 1 km high building and investments of $ 2 billion.

“In addition to reviving the center, it will become a national tourist route, because who will not want to know the largest building in the world, which is in the interior of São Paulo?” Manga told Reuters. The municipality approved at the end of last year new master plan that revokes constructive limits in the expanded center of Sorocaba, enabling the construction of the 170 -story building.

“(Before) had a limit of up to four times the size of the land, and the price … It was a grant that made it unfeasible for the entrepreneur to make any type of construction in this regard. Today has no limit,” said the mayor, adding that the billionaire investment would come from private initiative.

About 25 companies have shown interest in taking over the project and are in conversations with the municipal planning secretary, Manga said, without revealing their names.

Although there is no builder or investors defined for the desired project, the mayor says he wants to start the works later this year. “Our idea is that this construction already starts in 2025.”

The larger skyscraper construction movement in Brazil seems to be a trend, said architect and urban planner Luís Henrique Bueno Villanova, a member of the Urban Building Council and Habitat (CTBUH), an international organization responsible for the Skyscrapper Center ranking.

“It’s a trend in the world, but for our feature here in Brazil, we would need to set our way to plan the city so that the high building actually works for what it should be proposed, which is clustering people and densifying the locals,” said Villanova, noticing the importance of urban planning to prevent projects “loose” and become a “white elephant” in cities.

“This is both the base, which is the human scale and in the compatibility of heights, in scaling, which even help in shading,” he said, citing as an example of challenge the blocking of sunlight over neighboring buildings.

“All this can be mitigated. So much so that European and US cities, much colder and with more bruscan solar angles than ours, produce tall buildings without any problem… What we need is to adapt.”

Villanova also highlighted infrastructure challenges in the construction of these spikes.
“The highest building will always generate more energy spending than any other, precisely because it has this power to cluster more people inside it,” he said. Among the solutions, he mentioned the reuse of rainwater, solar panels and vegetation on the facade.

“This building needs to be contextualized in this city that already exists and supplying environmental issues.”