Houses We Love: Every day we feature an exceptional space sent by our neighborhood of architects, designers, builders, and house owners. Have one to share? Post it here.Project Information: Location: São Paulo, Brazil
From the Architect:”The Caetés Home
is located on a city plot within a mixed-use zone of São Paulo, Brazil. The street is peaceful, identified by the coexistence of property, service, and commercial uses. Its proximity to mass transit and easy access to green infrastructure develop a beneficial urban context. The program accommodates a large household including a couple and 5 children. The household setup is ‘tentacular,’including a complex and interconnected structure that moves beyond the conventional nuclear model, integrating different unions, separations, remarriages, and varied affective bonds, resulting in a broadened network of relationships.”The implementation of a compact three-story
volume enhances the use of constructed areas and their relationship with the exterior spaces, prioritizing natural lighting and ventilation. Each floor was created with unique functions and destinations. The design of each level was idealized to offer optimal flexibility, adopting an open plan with internal drywall partitions. The intermediate level, with direct access from the street, houses an open driveway for 2 cars connected to a vestibule where the primary staircase lies. Adjacent to this space, two independent workplaces, separated by spaces, integrate the characteristics of adult work and children’s leisure into every day life. The lower floor concentrates the social area, with an integrated living-room, dining room, and kitchen area dealing with the yard, and a patio permeated by gardens. This structure level features longitudinal openings along the boundaries, providing light and ventilation to a semi-underground floor, making sure personal privacy while at the same time providing a fortunate view of the city skyline. The upper floor is committed to the bed rooms, arranged along a corridor that gets light infiltrated concrete cobogós (hollow blocks). This flooring sticks out for its high ceilings and generous cross-ventilation, which streams across the two exteriors specified by the perforated concrete panels. These big airplanes include balanced openings that frame the city view.”The block’s roofing functions as a suspended garden, integrated with the city’s flora and animals. This garden serves as a ‘green sponge,’absorbing large volumes of water
during rainy periods. Integrated into this garden is the home’s technical area. This area houses the water tank, pressurizer, air-conditioning condensers for the workplaces, and an electrical panel prepared for the future setup and combination of solar panels.”The home adopts a scheme of raw materials, such as exposed bricks and concrete blocks, polished concrete floors (laje zero), and precast concrete pieces, which contrast withlarge glass panes in aluminum frames. Exposed setups– with each pipe color-coded by function– strengthen the building’s’brutalism, ‘juxtaposing industrial and artisanal components as a representation of modern building strategies. The project incorporates numerous references to critical works of modern-day architecture, influences that enrich the creative procedure and the living experience.”