Küster Brizola's 200 m² Apartment Centers on a Checkerboard Floor

Küster Brizola Arquitetos' Brooklin apartment covers 200 m² in São Paulo and carries a 2026 project date. Lead architects João Gabriel Kuster and Arthur Brizola designed the residence for a couple with two children.

The architects' own text, supplied with the project, sets out a deliberately narrow brief: one floor pattern, one social zone, and a household defined by gathering. A traditional checkerboard floor becomes the main protagonist, and the classic pattern serves as "the organizing element of the social area and the apartment's identity."

What does the checkerboard floor change for a family home?

It moves the floor pattern out of decoration and into spatial structure. Most patterned floors sit under furniture and finish a room. Here, the pattern organizes the social area, the zone built for people to gather, eat, talk and host guests.

The apartment's identity starts on the ground plane rather than in an object, finish or wall treatment, none of which the description specifies. Checkerboard flooring is one of the oldest patterns in residential interiors, so the idea itself isn't new; the assigned role is. The architects present a working element for daily family life, not a nostalgic reference.

The description also sets limits worth respecting. It names the social area as the zone the pattern organizes. It says nothing about circulation, storage or the service core. Those decisions belong to the drawings, not to the project summary.

Who is the apartment designed for?

A couple with two children. The architects say the residence was "focused on gathering, hosting friends and family, and building cherished memories." That's a brief statement of intent, but a specific one. The project starts from the question of how a family shares time.

The 200 m² figure gives that program its scale, and the household it houses — four people, plus guests — makes the social area the most heavily used part of the plan. The checkerboard floor has to work every day and hold a room together as the number of occupants changes.

Who built and photographed the project?

Manuel Sá photographed the apartment. The credits name ten manufacturers and suppliers:

• Antiquário Cristiano Ross
• Bout engenharia
• Feira na Rosenbaum
• Galeria Papel Assinado
• Galeria Teo
• Keramika
• Marcenaria Fogaci
• Montrelux
• Portobello Shop
• lumini | iluminação

The source doesn't attach a specific product or scope to any one name. It records ten credited suppliers without mapping any name to a specific room, material, surface or contract value, leaving the material palette of the checkerboard floor itself undefined.

What does the 2026 project signal?

The Brooklin apartment arrives as a single-home project with a compact, legible idea. One familiar pattern does the work of a spatial framework. The architects' summary puts the social area, not the finishes, at the center.

What does that change for clients considering a 200 m² family apartment? It moves the first question in the brief from finishes to layout: which zone carries the family, and what organizes it without adding a second visual idea. The checkerboard answer is one option, and in this project it is the only organizing principle the architects describe.

For now, the test for the Brooklin home is whether that grid still reads clearly when the room fills with guests.