Casa na Serra da Canastra

House in Serra da Canastra

Paulo Lopes was born in the countryside of Minas Gerais State, in Passos. Although living in Rio de Janeiro for over three decades, he has always known how to keep his relationship with his birthplace and old friends. In 2004, SPBR was asked to design his family house in Santa Teresa, a historical hill in Rio with a remarkable view to the Sugar Loaf and last year, 2016, he brought us this new commission for a place in Serra da Canastra, an enormous protected area on the mountains range one hour driving from Passos.
The program combines four small houses: one for Paulo and Rosa and one for each of their three daughters with their current or future families. Each house is independent but sharing facilities to bring everyone together as kitchen and dining room and a common living room. Each one a fragment of a whole.
Scale is an issue.
First, regarding to the relationship between each room or single house and the architectural ensemble. In such a way that the two of them could be carefully considered in order to provide some identity to both parts as well to the whole. Two elements were used to link them: [1] 444m of stonewall, actually a 1m height retain wall, which defines the spot for each house; [2] a 1m height plinth measuring 30m x 90m, as a garden [1,350.00m2] plateau that connects all of them.
Second, scale in its relationship with geography. How could a house face those hills? How to proper balance the vast landscape with the intimacy of a home space? A designing reaction to this question was to relate each one of them with a specific orientation, as cardinal points providing identity to north, east, south and west house. Thus, to define a clear domain four those houses by building a few and clear elements on a very reduced and telluric set of materials: earth, rammed earth, stone and wood.
Architecture going back to nature as a man turns into his memories.