Ruy Ohtake – Paths of Dwelling

Tickets: R$50,00

Half-price tickets: available for students, people aged 60 and over, and teachers (upon presentation of valid proof at the time of purchase and upon entry to the Casa-Ateliê). Free admission: available for Tomie Members (upon presentation of a membership card and photo ID); Nubank and Nubank Ultravioleta clients (upon presentation of the card); people with disabilities (entitled to one companion); children aged 10 and under (upon presentation of an ID document); and ICOM cardholders.

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The Tomie Ohtake House-Studio served as the artist’s home, workplace, and gathering space for over four decades. Designed by her eldest son, architect Ruy Ohtake, the residence was built in three phases, evolving to meet the needs of family life, Tomie’s creative practice, and the collections of her son Ricardo Ohtake, while reflecting the development of Ruy’s architectural thinking. From the beginning, shared spaces were prioritized: compact bedrooms stood in contrast to expansive living areas conceived as a kind of “covered plaza” – a place for socializing and dialogue with artists and intellectuals.

The house’s architecture, a notable contribution to Brazilian cultural history, exemplifies modern ways of living and working, while also enabling encounters and debates within both the Brazilian and international cultural scenes. In 1971, the building received the IAB Award for Best Design from the Instituto de Arquitetos do Brasil, and in 2013, it was officially designated as part of São Paulo’s cultural heritage by the Conselho Municipal de Preservação do Patrimônio Histórico, Cultural e Ambiental da Cidade de São Paulo (Conpresp).

The House-Studio now enjoys official heritage status, but beyond that, the best way to preserve it is through inhabiting it – with culture, art, encounters, and memory in motion. It is therefore important to understand that the architecture was designed to bring together silent contemplation and creative vitality. It was built to host visits, conversations, exhibitions, workshops, and research – ideally with a diverse and transdisciplinary spirit.

Today, the House-Studio remains alive, an enduring record of Tomie’s path, Ruy’s innovations, and Ricardo’s cultural initiatives – a legacy grounded in artistic inventiveness and collective sharing. It now welcomes new practices, encounters, and experiences that expand its potential as a space for cultural creation and co-living, in ongoing dialogue with the Instituto Tomie Ohtake and its teams.

The exhibition Ruy Ohtake – Percursos do Habitar [Ruy Ohtake – Paths of Dwelling] is presented by the Ministry of Culture, through the Culture Incentive Law (Rouanet Law) and the Instituto Tomie Ohtake. It is sponsored by Nubank, patron of Instituto Tomie Ohtake, and Cebrace, as a Gold sponsor, with support from AkzoNobel and Instituto Coral.

Instituto Tomie Ohtake

The entrance corridor of the House-Studio was conceived by Ruy Ohtake as a gallery for works by Tomie Ohtake and by artists close to the family. With its deliberately subdued lighting, the space serves as a transition from the street to the dwelling’s private interior. Along the path, points of light from skylights guide the visitor toward the living room, which is amply lit by a larger ceiling opening and by natural light streaming in from the garden. One side of the corridor features colors that recur throughout the house and in other projects by Ruy – yellow, blue, and white. On the opposite wall begins a built-in concrete bookshelf that extends along the living-room wall, running its entire length.

Tomie Ohtake (1913–2015)
Born in Kyoto, Japan, Tomie Nakakubo arrived in São Paulo in 1936, accompanied by one of her brothers, to visit another who was already living in the city. Although the initial plan was to stay for up to two years, increasing tensions leading up to World War II made Tomie decide to remain in Brazil. In 1937, she married Ushio Ohtake – a friend and colleague of her brother – with whom she had two sons, Ruy Ohtake (1938–2021) and Ricardo Ohtake (1942). The couple separated in 1961.

In 1952, at the age of 39, she created her first paintings, which she exhibited that same year at the 2nd São Paulo Salon of Modern Art. The following year, she began her abstract explorations and joined the Seibi Group, or Seibi-Kai, which had been gathering Japanese-Brazilian artists to produce, discuss, and promote their works since 1935, with a strong emphasis on individual freedom in their creations. In a group composed predominantly of men – as well as artists in the field of abstraction in general –, Tomie Ohtake carved out a space for herself in the Brazilian art scene, not without facing resistance. During this first decade of production, she participated in numerous salons and group exhibitions; she held her first solo exhibition in 1957 at the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo; and, as early as 1961, she participated in the 6th São Paulo Biennial.

From 1960 onwards, the constructive and project-oriented process of the paintings became very important to Tomie. Selecting textures and colors from magazines, she tore small pieces of paper and created collages that served as drafts for her paintings, where irregularly edged blocks of color were formed in oil paint. In the following decade, the cutouts started to be made with scissors, making the edges clean and continuous, which consequently altered her paintings. At this time, Tomie also began exploring printmaking, resulting in a large production of serigraphs and metal engravings. It was also in 1970 that she moved from her house in Mooca to the House-Studio in Campo Belo.

From the 1980s onwards, Tomie Ohtake’s painting changed with the gradual adoption of acrylic paint, allowing her to work with fluid layers, with which she created a play of transparency and depth. Parallel to painting, she began producing sculptures and public works, many of them on a grand scale. Just as she approached her paintings in a project-oriented manner, these works were also born from the construction of small models – in wire or paper – which were later enlarged by teams of engineers. Steel or concrete sculptures, panels of colored tiles, or large murals on buildings’ walls, these works transformed her relationship with urban space and the public, and she produced them until the end of her life.

She also continued painting until the age of 101, with successive new experiments and interests that led her, in the 2010s, to her last major shift, during which she produced luminous monochromes. A few months after completing this group of works, she passed away, leaving us her legacy and commitment to experimentation, as well as the freedom of creation that she always generously shared with everyone around her.

1966
The House-Studio originally occupied a rectangular lot and a garden located at the center of the block. The organization of the house relied on concrete elements – walls, beams, slabs, and furniture – which structured its functions throughout the space. The dining room – initially located beneath the large skylight – and the living room were spacious and interconnected, conceived as areas for family life and social gatherings. Two small bedrooms were situated at the center of the floor plan, limiting their use to sleeping. At the back of the residence, Tomie Ohtake’s first studio opened onto the rest of the house and the garden, followed by her bedroom.

1982
In the early 1980s, the neighboring lot was purchased, allowing the house to expand. The kitchen was enlarged, the dining room was relocated to a larger space that opened directly onto the garden, and a library was built for Ricardo Ohtake. The expansion maintained the same materials as the original construction – exposed concrete walls and blocks, beams following the same modular rhythm, and the same floor finish – reinforcing continuity with the existing house. At this stage, curves began to appear more boldly in Ruy Ohtake’s designs, visible in the expanded façade and in the projecting concrete roof over the garden. This phase further strengthened the house’s role as a place for both living and working.

1996
In the 1990s, a new studio for Tomie Ohtake and a storage facility for the preservation of her works were built. To accommodate the increasing scale of her paintings and sculptures, these spaces were designed with higher ceilings than the rest of the building. The concrete surfaces and the opening onto the garden reinforce the house’s unity, while the large metal-and-glass skylight provides natural light and signals a new phase of constructive experimentation in Ruy Ohtake’s work.

The architecture of a given period is revealed not only in grand public monuments, but especially in the spaces that shelter everyday life. As Italian philosopher Emanuele Coccia proposes in Philosophy of the Home (2024), the domestic realm has long been relegated to a kind of “theoretical neglect,” treated as a machine that conceals the complexities of social order and private happiness. Yet it is precisely within the walls of the home that society takes shape and comes to recognize itself. This exhibition presents the dwellings proposed by architect Ruy Ohtake as manifestos of that insight: far from being isolated refuges, his houses embodied a sensitive mediation between the individual and the city, transforming intimate space into the central stage of a vibrant and generous Brazilian architecture.

Throughout his career, Ruy Ohtake developed more than three hundred designs, ranging from single-family houses and apartment buildings to large-scale urban infrastructural works. Regardless of scale, the architect maintained that each design should embody a critical approach to contemporary ways of living. In this sense, his residential work is notable for rethinking the hierarchies of dwelling – an approach that resonates in residents’ accounts of how these homes became places of living memory and lived experience.

Building on the idea of the house-as-plaza, these residences are conceived as spaces oriented toward encounter: shared living areas are expanded and emphasized, while private spaces are pared down to their essential dimension. Light governs the spatial organization – sometimes concentrated, sometimes diffuse – and connects with interior gardens and recesses, guiding the domestic path and exploring the boundary between interior and exterior space. In contrast to houses built on compact lots, Ruy Ohtake also designed vantage-point houses, situated on sharply sloped terrain. In these cases, the horizon becomes a protagonist, without compromising the rigor with which voids and circulation are articulated, reaffirming architecture as a device for sociability.

To contextualize these developments in Ruy Ohtake’s architectural approach to dwelling, the exhibition presents single-family houses built between the 1960s and the 2000s – roughly one per decade – in dialogue with the Tomie Ohtake House-Studio, which hosts the show and whose forms express different phases of the architect’s work. In the exhibition design, a section dedicated to the Heliópolis Residential Complex extends this inquiry beyond the scale of the single-family house toward urban intervention, showing how Ohtake’s architecture reveals the house as a conceptual matrix from which an idea of the city is projected.

While each selected design stands apart through its own distinctive features, taken together they reveal the consistency of an architectural vision grounded in coexistence and shared experience – one shaped through the alternation of light and shadow, openness and opacity. By presenting these designs in interrelation, the exhibition brings into focus a continuous path of dwelling in Ruy Ohtake’s work, in which house and city, private and collective life, emerge as inseparable dimensions.

Catalina Bergues and Sabrina Fontenele
Curators

Ruy Ohtake (1938–2021)
Ruy Ohtake was born in São Paulo and graduated as an architect and urban planner from the Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Universidade de São Paulo (FAUUSP) in 1960. Over more than six decades of professional activity, he was involved in the design and execution of works on various scales, ranging from object design to interventions in large urban areas. The hundreds of projects he completed across a wide range of programs – single-family residences, bank branches, public service agencies, apartment and office buildings, cultural and educational spaces, as well as infrastructural works and public facilities – demonstrate his constant concern with creating spaces of sociability, his pursuit of innovative technologies, his attention to the plasticity of volumes, reliefs, and surfaces, and his use of striking colors, exemplified by the Instituto Tomie Ohtake.

Among his large-scale urban works, Parque Ecológico do Tietê [Tietê Ecological Park] (1975), cultural and educational projects in Heliópolis, and Expresso Tiradentes [Tiradentes Express] (2007) stand out, attesting to his social commitment. The architect also served as president of the Conselho de Defesa do Patrimônio Histórico, Arqueológico, Artístico e Turístico do Estado de São Paulo (Condephaat) from 1979 to 1982.

Ruy was awarded the Gold Collar by the Instituto de Arquitetos do Brasil in 2007 and received 25 other awards. He also held the title of professor emeritus at the Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Universidade Católica de Santos and received an honoris causa degree from Universidade Braz Cubas.

The Studio as a Space for Experimentation
This space served as Tomie Ohtake’s first studio during the initial phase of the house. Large glass doors allow natural light from the garden to enter, while the ceiling height – higher than in the rest of the residence – enabled broader gestures in Tomie’s artistic practice. It was here that, in the 1980s, the artist began using acrylic paint in her art projects and initiated the production of large-scale public works. When the house was expanded and a new studio was built, this space was repurposed to hold records of Tomie’s artistic research: map-drawer cabinets containing posters, correspondence, awards, works by the artist and by friends, as well as scale models and photographs of her public projects.

Now, with its inventive spirit renewed, the space opens up to welcome new experimental practices. Beyond preserving Tomie’s memory, it becomes a place for creative exercises, encounters, and collective processes that engage with the artist’s legacy while, at the same time, pointing toward new ways of thinking about and practicing art.

Starting in the 1980s, Tomie Ohtake began producing public works: large-scale panels and sculptures installed in open spaces such as public squares and the outer side walls of buildings, as well as in interior settings like subway stations and auditoriums.

Even when made with heavy, unwieldy materials, these works convey a sense of movement, lightness, and balance. Their execution often required teams working alongside the artist, bringing together technicians, engineers, draftspeople, architects, and construction workers. Tomie stated that public works are capable of placing viewers in direct contact with art within the urban landscape and everyday life, inviting a dialogue between the work, the space, and the people who surround it.

The Experience of Dwelling
Around the dining table of the House-Studio – where Tomie Ohtake organized events and welcomed friends and family for traditional Sunday lunches – accounts from residents of houses designed by Ruy Ohtake come together. More than descriptions of spaces, these narratives give form to lived experience: the presence of the body, the relationship with light, shared everyday life, and memories in dialogue with architecture. Visitors are invited to sit at the table and listen to how dwelling takes shape in Ruy’s houses.

Tomie Ohtake Residence
Campo Belo, São Paulo (SP)

Design: 1966
Conclusion: 1970
Plot Size: 960m²
Building Area: 540m²

Architects: Ruy Ohtake, Adolfo Sato
Structure: Ruy Tone
Construction Company: Nelson Vitorino

IAB Annual Prize from the Instituto de Arquitetos do Brasil in 1971.
Listed as heritage site by the Conselho Municipal de Preservação do Patrimônio Histórico, Cultural e Ambiental da Cidade de São Paulo (Conpresp) in 2013.

Chiyo Hama Residence
Campo Belo, São Paulo (SP)

Design: 1967
Conclusion: 1969
Plot Size: 500m²
Building Area: 280m²

Architects: Ruy Ohtake, Hitoshi Koyama, Ana Regina D’Andretta, Leiko Hama
Structure: Ruy Tone
Construction Company: Nelson Vitorino

Organized under a single roof, the house is conceived as a continuous space in which the rooms flow freely and expand through a lateral pergola, integrating interior and exterior areas. Enclosed spaces—bedrooms, bathrooms, and laundry rooms—are reduced and individualized, preserving the centrality of shared spaces. It is in this project that Ruy Ohtake formulates, for the first time, the idea of the “small sheltered plaza.”

Honorable Mention from the 10th International Architecture Exhibition (later called International Architecture Biennial) in 1969.
Listed as heritage site by the Conselho Municipal de Preservação do Patrimônio Histórico, Cultural e Ambiental da Cidade de São Paulo (Conpresp) in 2013.

Nadir Zacarias Residence
Jardim Guedala, São Paulo (SP)

Design: 1970
Conclusion: 1972
Plot Size: 400m²
Building Area: 321m²

Architects: Ruy Ohtake, Ana Regina D’Andretta
Structure: Siguer Mitsutani
Construction Company: Nelson Vitorino

Built on a steeply sloped site, this house exemplifies the concept of the vantage-point house. With a height difference of nearly ten meters, the project takes advantage of the topography, opening broad views toward the surrounding hills and incorporating the landscape into the domestic space through lateral verandas that connect interior and exterior. At the center of the house, the living room is organized around a concrete spiral staircase and receives natural light both from the verandas and from large skylights, emphasizing the openness of the space and the vocation of the living area as a place of encounter.

Listed as heritage site by the Conselho Municipal de Preservação do Patrimônio Histórico, Cultural e Ambiental da Cidade de São Paulo (Conpresp) in 2013.

Domingos Brás Residence
Centro, Itanhaém (SP)

Design: 1989
Conclusion: 1991
Plot Size: 1.000m²
Building Area: 365m²

Architects: Ruy Ohtake, Léo Bonfim Jr., Selma Pinheiro Carvalho, Annie Claude Cartolano
Structure: José Roberto Sanches
Landscape: Olair de Camilo
Construction Company: Degaulle Cei

The building is organized in a U-shape, with a curved slab that wraps around the garden and swimming pool, toward which all rooms are oriented. Glass panels ensure permeability between interior and exterior, making the central void the organizing element of domestic life. In the garage, this void is defined by a curved slab that folds into wall and floor, configuring one of the project’s most striking gestures and revealing Ruy Ohtake’s technical mastery in working with concrete. This same curve would later reappear in his furniture designs.

Zuleika Halpern Residence
Jardim Paulistano, São Paulo (SP)

Projeto de reforma: 2004
Conclusion: 2005
Plot Size: 820m²
Building Area: 460m²

Architect: Ruy Ohtake

With a renovation project designed by Ruy Ohtake, this house affirms the integration of art and architecture as a structuring principle. The façade is marked by wooden panels and oval windows, with a work by Emanoel Araújo placed on the entrance terrace. The spacious living room, the core of the project, opens laterally through three oval cutouts and, at the rear, through a strongly curved glass wall facing the garden, which encloses a sculpture by Arthur Lescher. At the center of the room, a nine-meter-long sinuous table sets the rhythm of the space and reinforces the house’s vocation as a place for meeting and social life.

Heliópolis Residential Complex
Heliópolis, São Paulo (SP)

Design: 2009
Conclusion: 2017
Plot Size: 48.209m²
Building Area: 40.472m²

Architect: Ruy Ohtake
Structure: MR Engenharia
Landscape: Olair De Camilo
Construction Company: Construbase, Engeform, Consórcio Paez Lima/Simétrica

Ricardo Ohtake (1942)
A graduate of the Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Universidade de São Paulo (FAUUSP), Ricardo Ohtake developed his work through a sustained dialogue between architecture, design, and culture. Throughout a span of five decades, he ran graphic design studios that produced visual identities, cultural initiatives, and, above all, editorial and graphic projects for art books. He served as president of the Associação dos Designers Gráficos (ADG Brasil), taking charge of its cultural programs and contributing to the development of Brazilian design and to the work of practicing designers.

His commitment to culture extended beyond his work in design. Between 1980 and 2001, he held a series of strategic positions in São Paulo’s public administration: he served as the first director of the Centro Cultural São Paulo (1980–1983), director of the Museu da Imagem e do Som de São Paulo (1989–1991), director of the Cinemateca Brasileira (1992–1993), Secretary of Culture of the State of São Paulo (1993–1995), and Secretary of Greenery and the Environment of the City of São Paulo (1998–2001). In these roles, he was responsible for pioneering initiatives, including the creation of the São Paulo Municipal Environmental Atlas and restoration projects for iconic city parks, such as Parque da Luz and Ibirapuera.

Between 1968 and 1983, Ricardo Ohtake was a university professor at several schools of architecture, communication, and fine arts. He served as curator for Brazil at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2010) and curated the exhibition Neun Neue [New Nine], on Brazilian architecture, presented in parallel with the Frankfurt Book Fair (2013). He is currently honorary president of the Associação Nacional das Entidades Culturais Não Lucrativas (ANEC) and a board member of several cultural institutions.

In 2001, he founded the Instituto Tomie Ohtake, where he served as president for 23 years and, since 2023, as chair of the Deliberative Board. Currently, Ricardo Ohtake continues to carry forward his family’s legacy as a key reference in Brazilian cultural policy, recognized for integrating preservation, innovation, and the fostering of artistic creation.

In 1996, a new studio was built for Tomie Ohtake, combining signs of continuity and of rupture in relation to earlier phases of Ruy Ohtake’s project for the house. The black concrete floor follows the same formal language as the rest of the residence, while openings framed by colored concrete walls signal paths and transitions from one sector to another. Meanwhile, the new studio’s metal roof reflects Ruy’s constant search for an architectural expression of his own time. The concrete present throughout the house – in the furniture, wall blocks, and roof slabs – comes to coexist with a metal-and-glass skylight that provides the workspace with ample natural lighting. The brushes and paint pots used by the artist remain on the concrete shelves, while the splatters of paint that mark the floor reveal part of her daily work routine.

Housing and Community
Ruy Ohtake’s long relationship with Heliópolis began in 2004 with the Cor em Heliópolis [Color in Heliópolis] project. In collaboration with the União de Núcleos, Associações dos Moradores de Heliópolis e Região (UNAS), the architect developed, in dialogue with the community, the painting of nearly two hundred façades along Mina and Paraíba streets. Each resident chose the color of their own home, establishing a relationship of trust between the architect and the community. That connection would prove fundamental to the development of a broader housing initiative and an educational and cultural center – followed by projects for a community library, daycare center, technical school (ETEC), and, in 2009, the Condomínio Residencialde Heliópolis [Heliópolis ResidentialComplex]. These projects were conceived to weave the periphery into the city’s fabric through architecture.

The buildings of the Heliópolis Residential Complex, nicknamed by inhabitants as the redondinhos (“the little round ones”), range from five to eight stories per tower, with four apartments per floor. Inside the fifty-square-meter units, the circular layout allows the living room – equipped with three windows – to offer an open view and natural cross-ventilation, with daylight reaching every room.

The site plan prioritizes shared spaces and community life, keeping the ground floor open and equipped with sports courts and playgrounds. Parking was moved to the perimeter of the lot, ensuring a safe environment for pedestrians and children. Only two housing units are located on the ground floor – reserved for elderly residents or those with reduced mobility – while the remaining area is maintained as a free, sheltered space for leisure. The choice of intense façade colors helps foster identity and belonging in daily life. By aligning architectural design with the social needs expressed by residents, the project proposes that architecture and urbanism can support a more egalitarian city, offering the experience of living in an environment interwoven with green spaces.