One of the regeneration strategies for the decaying urban areas in Brazil is the insertion of cultural and educational venues that can accommodate large events and thus bring enhancements to the surrounding neighborhood while at the same time attracting new audiences. The Cultural Complex Luz, located in the dilapidated neighborhood of the same name in São Paulo, is a new center for music, dance and theater that will be part of the largest cultural district in Latin America. The district currently includes the Free University of Music, the São Paulo State Art Gallery, the city’s main concert hall inside the Júlio Prestes train station, Luz Park, the Museum of Portuguese Language, and the Museum of Sacred Art.

The center is a platform for the relationship of all kinds of users and visitors, where the broad program includes a main dance theater for 1,750 people, an experimental theater, a music school for two thousand students, workshops, a recital hall, administration areas and offices. It is also the home for the São Paulo Dance Company. To enhance the relationship among the arts and create greater variation of spaces, the building consists of interwoven horizontal bands which cross at split levels. These wide, linear bands act like city streets that organize circulation and favor diverse exchanges, aside from ensuring ventilation and creating large courtyards that bring light into every space.

The building is located between two parks that flow through the complex. Lush tropical planting fills the porous fabric of crossing bands, improving thermal behavior and defining a climatic transition between exterior and interior. The conditioned rooms are configured as boxes between the slabs.

One of the bands slopes down towards the exterior. This inviting gesture generates a main entrance ramp linking Júlio Prestes Plaza with the central lobby at the heart of the building, the largest gathering space and distribution device, intending to bring different users together in one common area. This central space provides a sweeping panorama of the interior and all its programme elements, showing how activities are distributed and where to access each area of the compound. The three main performance venues are nested within the network of interwoven slabs, directly connected with the lobby and with different interior configurations.