São Paulo building for the future freeze-frames Brazil's past

In the middle of Sao Paulo's vibrant new financial centre is a small eighteenth century house built by one of Brazil's pioneering ‘bandeirantes’, one of the last historical buildings left in the country's largest city. A prestigious new 21-storey office building – national headquarters for the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China as well as Google and many others investing in Brazil's future – was recently completed directly in front of the house, but city planners insisted the historic property should remain publicly visible and accessible. This required a 41 m wide, 30 m high opening through the new building to provide a permanent reminder of the country's pioneering past, which in turn called for a 6 m deep post-tensioned transfer structure. This paper describes the design and construction of this concrete-framed building with a difference, focusing on its massive transfer structure – the concrete for which was mixed with ice instead of water to minimise thermal cracking.