Hanazaki Office by Studio Guilherme Torrês

_presented by Arthur Decor & Vertia

_project: Hanazaki Office
_architecture: Studio Guilherme Torrês
_location: São Paulo, Brazil

The workplace has become one of the clearest spaces through which to question how people want to live, collaborate, and focus today. No longer defined only by efficiency, the office is increasingly expected to offer atmosphere, comfort, and a sense of belonging. As the boundaries between domestic, hospitality, and professional spaces continue to shift, landscape gains a renewed role, guiding movement, framing encounters, and changing how people experience the workday.

Located in São Paulo, Hanazaki Office by Studio Guilherme Torres explores this relationship through a close dialogue between architecture and garden. Designed for landscape architect Alex Hanazaki, the project emerged from a compact site and a clear ambition: to make vegetation a dominant presence within the architecture itself.

Rather than treating the garden as something outside the building, the project reverses this logic. Here, nature is not only encountered before entering the architecture; it becomes part of the interior experience. The office is organized around the idea that everyone who works in or visits the space should have their gaze directed toward greenery. With limited ground area available, the vertical garden became a decisive strategy, allowing landscape to expand upward and become an integral part of the spatial experience.

The architecture is marked by clean lines, natural materials, and carefully composed contrasts. At the entrance, a white wall meets a black surface that extends like a ribbon, wrapping the ground floor and giving visual weight to the upper levels. The use of shou sugi ban, a traditional Japanese technique of charred wood, connects the project to Hanazaki’s ancestry and to a sense of quiet organization.

Inside, instead of relying on rigid partitions, the project uses planting as a living structure. Vegetation filters views, creates privacy, defines transitions, and softens the experience of moving through the office. This sensory quality continues onto the rooftop, where an urban orchard introduces fruit trees into the dense context of central São Paulo.

The result is a workplace shaped by balance: the restraint of Japanese references, the vitality of Brazilian tropical vegetation, the compactness of the site, and the generosity of the garden. Meetings, informal conversations, and moments of focus take place within an atmosphere of quietness, where light, texture, and greenery become part of the daily rhythm.

For a landscape practice, this gesture carries particular meaning. Hanazaki Office reflects the studio’s work through the experience of the space itself. The garden becomes language, identity, and method, showing how landscape can support comfort, creativity, and spatial clarity.

_article written by Daniela Moreira da Silva
_film by Architecture Hunter
_cover and image scroll by Estúdio NY 18