Set within a forested estate outside São Paulo, this home places communal living spaces above quieter private rooms, creating two distinct connections with the surrounding landscape.
There is a quiet clarity to this home’s design, revealed in its considered approach to site and program. Set on a hillside within the Quinta da Baroneza estate in São Paulo state, the residence overturns convention by inverting the typical arrangement of spaces. Rather than placing private rooms above and social areas below, the architects have positioned the living spaces on the upper level, with the bedrooms below. This reversal defines the experience of the home, organising it around two distinct relationships with the surrounding landscape and ensuring cross-ventilation for the upper social spaces.
When the panels are opened, air moves across the water and into the residence, cooling it passively and carrying the moisture and scent of the surrounding forest. “The brief asked for natural ventilation and cross-breezes, and the pool is central to how that works,” architect Arthur Casas says. “The sound of water, the movement of air and the way light filters through the timber roof all contribute to the atmosphere.”
That roof is the project’s defining gesture, a glued laminated timber structure that unfolds in two inclined planes, almost like open wings. It is a deliberate departure for Studio Arthur Casas, a direct reference to the pitched roof form, and it demanded a level of precision in alignment and proportion that drove the construction toward a dry-assembly system of prefabricated elements. The result feels more assembled than constructed, each piece placed with a clear logic.
