S
itting among the tropical lushness of Ara
Vartanian’s courtyard garden in São Paulo, it is
hard to imagine the seven years of toil and
trouble that went into creating the house that
surrounds it. A calm oasis in the heart of South
America’s largest city, this picture of serenity
belies the ever-changing set of plans and years of back and
forth between Vartanian the jewellery designer and Aldo
Urbinati – the architect of São Paulo’s Estudio Tupi – in
their quest for design-led domestic bliss.
Ara did not start out with such grand ambitions for the
project. On the lookout for a home to better accommodate
his and his wife Sabrina Gasperin’s growing family, he initially
thought, on discovering the original house on a quiet, gated
street of 10 homes, that it required only minor alterations.
“I said to Sabrina, ‘Let’s buy it, let’s paint it and let’s move
in. There’s just one change I want to make in the back first,’”
the Brazilian designer, 44, recalls with a smile. That one
minor change soon snowballed into multiple, evermore
ambitious ones to accommodate Vartanian’s manifold
passions for everything midcentury, including furniture,
tapestries and stereo equipment.
He quickly resolved that the house would need a vast
underground level in which to keep the collection of vintage
cars and motorbikes he restores in his spare time. Four years
in, he and Urbinati decided to pull down the front of the
original house altogether. “I always had this curiosity: how
is it going to be living inside the house?” he says. “We would
go into the spaces to decide how we were going to function
inside them, to see where the natural light comes in. We
changed plans all the time.”
It was no small matter that this prolonged period of
construction and redesign coincided with momentous
changes on personal and professional fronts. First, Sabrina- a former model who continues to appear in Vartanian’s
campaigns – gave birth to the couple’s third child, Leona,
now aged three, to join Alec, 14, and Lily, nine. And second,
on friend Kate Moss’s advice, Vartanian opened his first
store outside Brazil, a precious jewellery box of a boutique
in London’s Mayfair, also designed by Estudio Tupi, which >
ARA WEARS JACKET, CELINE BY HEDI SLIMANE. T-SHIRT AND JEANS, BOTH FRAME. BOOTS, SAINT LAURENT BY ANTHONY VACCARELLO. JEWELLERY AND WATCH, ARA’S OWN. GROOMING: LAURA LA LAINA. LOCAL PRODUCTION: GUSTAVO GROTA
Ara Vartanian at
home in São Paulo,
surrounded by his
carefully curated
collection of midcentury
modern furniture.
Sittings editor:
Gianluca LongoBALANCING
ACT
Just like the jewellery he designs, Ara Vartanian’s
São Paulo home weighs brutalist architectural
lines against midcentury modern curves – with
equally striking results. By Rachel Garrahan.
Photographs by André Klotz12-19-WELL-Interiors-AraVartarian.indd 213 04/10/2019 08:18209