The Edifício Copan (''Copan Building'') is a 118.44-metre (459 ft.) tall, 38-story residential building in downtown

São Paulo São Paulo (, ; Portuguese for ' Saint Paul') is the most populous city in Brazil, and is the capital of the state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest Brazilian state, located in the country's Southeast Region. Listed by the Ga ...

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

. It has 1,160 apartments, 70 commercial establishments and is one of the largest buildings in Brazil.

Design, construction and name

The building was designed by

Oscar Niemeyer Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida Niemeyer Soares Filho (15 December 1907 – 5 December 2012), known as Oscar Niemeyer (), was a Brazilian architect considered to be one of the key figures in the development of modern architecture. Niemeyer was ...

's office in São Paulo; Niemeyer was personally responsible for the building's famous

sinuous Sinuosity, sinuosity index, or sinuosity coefficient of a continuously differentiable curve having at least one inflection point is the ratio of the curvilinear length (along the curve) and the Euclidean distance (straight line) between the ...

façade. The idea was a building open to a mixed cross-section of Brazilian society. The original project envisioned two buildings, the other being a hotel, but in the end only the residential building was built. Construction began in 1952 and, following some interruptions, was completed in 1966. It is one of the largest buildings in Brazil. The building's name is an acronym for its original developer, Companhia Pan-Americana de Hotéis e Turismo (''

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

for "Pan-American Hotels and Tourism Company"). ''

Facilities

Currently, the building has 1,160 apartments, ranging from small studios to large three-bedroom units, and 2,038 residents, served by 20 elevators and 221 underground parking spaces. The ground floor is home to 72 businesses and establishments including (since the 1990s) an evangelical church, a travel agency, a bookstore, and 4 restaurants. Its site is 10,572.80 square meters (113,805 square feet) in area. Due to the large number of residents, the Brazilian postal service assigned the building its own postal code (" CEP"): 01046-925. The current condominium has over 100 employees to serve residents and to conduct maintenance. Niemeyer's original design contained a park outside the building, a second park in an open area of the first floor, and a roof-deck. The park outside is now used by a bank building; the first floor park and roof-deck are closed. Since 2014 the entire building has been covered by a transparent blue-black drape, to protect pedestrians from the facade's loose mosaic tiles. A project to repair and replace the building's 72 million exterior tiles is currently under consideration.

In popular culture

The Copan Building has inspired writers, filmmakers, photographers, and other artists from all over the world. A short story collection titled ''Arca sem Noé - Histórias do Edifício Copan'' ("Ark without Noah - Stories from the Copan Building"), by Brazilian author

Regina Rheda Regina Rheda (born 1957) is a Brazilian-born writer who lives in the United States. She is known for her prose fiction concerning urban life, transnational migration, class conflicts, and animal rights. She received a national book award, Prêmio ...

, was published in Portuguese in 1994 and won the 1995

Jabuti prize The red-footed tortoise (''Chelonoidis carbonarius'') is a species of tortoise from northern South America. These medium-sized tortoises generally average as adults, but can reach over . They have dark-colored, loaf-shaped carapaces (back shel ...

in Brazil. It has also been published in English as ''Stories From the Copan Building'', within the volume ''First World Third Class and Other Tales of the Global Mix'' (University of Texas Press). The Copan Building appeared on the second episode of ''

The Amazing Race 9 ''The Amazing Race 9'' is the ninth season of the American reality television show ''The Amazing Race.'' It featured eleven teams of two competing in a race around the world. The season premiered on CBS on February 28, 2006, and concluded on Ma ...

'' and was the site of a task in which contestants had to run up one of the building's fire escapes and rappel down an exterior wall. The building is available to build in the 2013 game ''

SimCity ''SimCity'' is an open-ended city-building video game series originally designed by Will Wright. The first game in the series, ''SimCity'', was published by Maxis in 1989 and were followed by several sequels and many other spin-off "''Sim ...

''.

Gallery

File:Centro SP2.jpg, The Edifício Copan in its urban context File:Edifício Copan, SP.jpg, Façade File:Escada de emergência - Edifício Copan, São Paulo - SP - Brasil.jpg, Fire staircases File:Copan-interior.jpg, Interior

References

Bibliography

* "Stories from the Copan Building" in ''FIRST WORLD THIRD CLASS AND OTHER TALES OF THE GLOBAL MIX'', by Regina Rheda. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005. * ''Arca sem Noé - Histórias do Edifício Copan'', by Regina Rheda. Rio: Record, 2010. Short stories in Portuguese.

External links

Edifício Copan Administration's Web site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Edificio Copan Copan Copan Copan Copan Copan Tourist attractions in São Paulo Residential skyscrapers in Brazil Retail buildings in Brazil