In São Paulo, young Brazilians have been gifted a bounty of modern and postmodern architecture, by some of the world’s most innovative, free-spirited architects. The cultural heft of this built environment is not lost on the generations of creative people who followed the Bo Bardis and Niemeyers. Having been inspired and nurtured in an atmosphere of utter originality and opportunity, many have responded with art and design that feels at home here.

The annual art and design exhibition Aberto or ‘open’, has staked its reputation on staging important contemporary art in a radical domestic setting. Lesser known works by the greats, like Casa Niemeyer and Tomie Ohtake’s concrete family home, have featured, as well as Le Corbusier‘s Maison La Roche, on the exhibition’s tour in Paris last year. Seemingly emboldened by those successes, this week Aberto founder Filipe Assis opens the doors to Casa Bola, a major architectural flex in Itaim Bibi, one of the city’s most exciting neighbourhoods.

On show this week until 31 May, works by local artists Erika Verzutti, Mauro Restiffe, Marina Perez Simão, Luísa Matsushita and Tatiana Chalhoub will activate the spherical Bola, home of architect Eduardo Longo, who built it by hand to much controversy in the 1970s. Dozens of artists and designers from Brazil and beyond — most notably the UK’s Sarah Lucas — will join them across the three-storey, 1,000-square-metre ‘habitable sculpture’. It is the first time Aberto occupies a house still inhabited by its architect; Longo will move out for the duration, but his customised furnishings will remain. Works will spill out into the boulevard outside, to engage with landmarks by architects such as Ruy Ohtake and Isay Weinfeld — and, of course, the public.

Along with boosting the work of young creatives, 15 of whom are contributing new, commissioned work, Assis hopes to raise awareness of architectural treasures often tucked behind walls or bowed trees. ‘Perhaps,’ he says, ‘the public would start reevaluating these houses as a history of architecture in Brazil, and the city, of course.’ Completed in 1979, Casa Bola fits the bill: the work of a maverick’s utopian vision, perched in a courtyard between taller, less remarkable buildings.

Assis, who curates alongside Claudia Moreira Salles and Kiki Mazzucchelli, calls Longo ‘one of Brazil’s luminaries’ and sees Aberto as a champion of the nation’s architects, designers, and artists, ‘as well as its key role as a promoter of the country’s cultural heritage both nationally and internationally.’ For a few weeks, at least, the neighbourhood will resemble the utopia Longo long ago imagined.

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