Location: Baleia – Praia da Baleia, São Paulo, Brazil

Area: 2340.0 sqm

Year: 2012

Architects: Studio Arthur Casas 

Photography: © Fernando Guerra | FG+SG

Four houses in front of Baleia Beach, on the northern coast of São Paulo. As a weekend house all the ground floor spaces are connected to promote social interaction, a patio increases the spatiality of the house, bringing diagonal views and light.

To assure privacy the houses are slightly unaligned.   Though the houses are very close to each other, vertical gardens are used on the blind walls of the neighbors, attenuating the effect of proximity. Large glass panels slide completely outside the house, erasing the boundaries between the interior and the landscape.

In front of each terrace there’s a swimming pool with a Jacuzzi, and a sauna on the basement. A barbecue space is in retreat of the terrace, contiguous to the living room.

The stairs are bathed in natural light in all the three floors, a glass wall used as partition. On the first floor hosts and guests are separated by a bridge next to the patio, the master bedroom with a generous view of the sea. Each bathroom has natural light brought by zenithal openings. The second floor has a home theater and a sunbathing deck above the master bedroom.

The cross section of the house stimulates natural ventilation, avoiding the use of air conditioning during summer. All the materials bring a warm sensation to the spaces, as the brick of the façades, natural fibers of the carpets or the wood flooring of the upper floors.

We also did the interior design of one of the houses. The furniture is mainly composed by vintage Brazilian  pieces, as the Mole armchair by Sérgio Rodrigues. The studio designed the table and the large bench of the living room. The client is an art collector, with pictures by Leonardo Kossoy , a painting by Christian Lemmerz and some pieces of popular Brazilian craftsmanship.

The landscape design was thought to use luxuriant tropical plants that protect from the view of the neighbors and accentuate the untouched character of this remote beach.

Studio Arthur Casas

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Studio Arthur Casas

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From the object to the landscape, inside out, the creative process of Studio Arthur Casas is intimately connected to a horizontal scale, where the main concern is the dialogue in the conception of programs that can be as diverse as a chair or an entire neighborhood, influenced by a spirit both modernist and contemporary that is Brazilian but also cosmopolitan.

The team of designers, architects and urbanists works from São Paulo and NY, and has built in several cities worldwide such as Tokyo, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, NY and São Paulo, creating a vocabulary that is recognized and published internationally.

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