Exhibition "Ruy Ohtake – Paths of Dwelling"

O Tomie Ohtake Institute is pleased to present Ruy Ohtake – Paths of Dwelling, an exhibition that inaugurates the new phase of Tomie Ohtake home-studioThe exhibition, curated by Catalina Bergues and Sabrina Fontenele, brings together six residential projects by architect Ruy Ohtake, carried out between the 1960s and 2010s, exploring the house as a central space for sociability, memory, and the construction of daily life. The exhibition takes place at the artist's former residence in Campo Belo, São Paulo.

The exhibition presents five single-family residences designed by Ruy Ohtake between the 1960s and 2000s – the Tomie Ohtake Studio-House (1966), the Chiyo Hama Residence (1967), the Nadir Zacarias Residence (1970), the Domingos Brás Residence (1989) and the Zuleika Halpern Residence (2004) – in addition to the Heliópolis Residential Condominium (2008/2009), known as “Redondinhos”.

The curatorial approach emphasizes the reorganization of housing hierarchies proposed by Ruy Ohtake. The architect developed the concept of the "house-square," conceiving the dwelling as a place for expanded conviviality. In this thinking, as the curators state, "residences are configured as places geared towards encounter: common areas are expanded and valued, while intimate spaces are reduced to their essential dimension. Light plays the role of guiding the spatial organization: sometimes focused, sometimes diffused, it articulates with internal gardens and recesses, guiding the domestic route and blurring the boundaries between interior and exterior."

Ohtake developed an architecture committed to the collective and to the sensitive mediation between the individual and the city. In the exhibition, these housing projects demonstrate how, in different urban contexts, scales, and historical moments, the architect constructed a critical reflection on the contemporary way of living, transforming each proposal into a concrete investigation into forms of inhabiting. Scale models of all the houses and the housing complex, historical photographs of the constructions and recent records, as well as technical drawings and sketches, make up the exhibition's itinerary, allowing visitors to follow both the design processes and the transformations of these spaces over time.

A series of videos featuring testimonials from residents deepens the experiential dimension of the exhibition, bringing together accounts of daily life, the uses of spaces, and the forms of coexistence made possible by these architectural structures. The narratives reveal how the houses designed by Ruy Ohtake have become environments of sociability, memory, and belonging, highlighting the permanence and vitality of his concepts over the decades.

The Heliópolis Residential Complex exemplifies how these principles also permeate the architect's larger-scale housing production. Ruy Ohtake played a decisive role in defending quality public spaces as an instrument of social inclusion, understanding architecture as a concrete tool for urban transformation. This work was exemplarily expressed in Heliópolis, where he worked in partnership with community leaders in the implementation of public facilities, such as the CEU Heliópolis and the "Redondinhos" (small roundabouts). Present in the exhibition, video testimonials from these community leaders broaden this perspective, situating dwelling as a collective and urban experience.

By bringing together distinct projects, the exhibition reveals the persistence of an architectural thought guided by sharing, by the alternation between light and shadow, openness and opacity, and by the inseparable articulation between the private and the collective.

Service
Exhibition | Ruy Ohtake – Paths of Dwelling
From March 07th to May 31st
Thursday to Sunday, from 10 pm to 17 pm