Homeowners In This São Paulo Complex Enjoy Access To Adjacent Hotel

2024 Best of Year Winner for International Multiunit Housing

The 40-story tower is part of Praça Henrique Monteiro, a mixed-use complex designed by Studio Arthur Casas that includes an adjacent hotel. Sensitive to the neighborhood of São Paulo, Brazil, the 332,000-square-foot development has a cohesive visual identity that is distinct without disrupting the skyline. Its two volumes share a precast-concrete base and an elevated private garden, and both have metal brise-soleils on their facades. Wraparound terraces with glass guardrails distinguish the 68 apartments, which feel larger than their 2,500 square feet thanks to open layouts and 80 linear feet of floor-to-ceiling windows. A lower corridor connects residents to the hotel and a partially suspended, glass-enclosed mezzanine with the pool, spa, and gym; stone flooring and wooden ceilings unify the common areas. The project also enlivens the street outside with a widened, tree-lined sidewalk and public furniture, while glass walls invite pedestrians into the hotel’s restaurant and bakery.

PROJECT TEAM: ARTHUR CASAS; GABRIEL RANIERI; NARA TELLES; CADU VILLELA; FABIOLA ANDRADE; PAULA REAL; ADRIANO BERGEMANN; REGINALDO MACHADO; GABRIELA GODINHO; BEATRIZ MENDES; ROBERTO CABARITI; LUCIANO SESSA; RAFAELA FRANCO DE BARCELOS; ANA PAULA MENDES; RAIMUNDO BORGES; ALESSANDRA MATTAR; MITI SAMESHIMA; MARCELLA FRANÇA; JOÃO LISBOA; VICTORIA CHAVES; NATÁLIA LORENZONI; AUGUSTO MATTOS; VALENTINA LINDNER; AMANDA TAMBURUS; ANA MARIA PEDRESCHI; MARCELO BICALHO.

This Brazilian Beach House Seemingly Floats Among The Trees

2024 Best of Year Winner for Beach House

Raised atop piloti on a steeply sloping site in Guarujá, Brazil, the 8,450-square-foot rectilinear home by Studio MK27 is nestled strategically within the Atlantic Forest canopy, high enough to afford Atlantic Ocean vistas, enveloping its residents in nature. Access between the ground-floor sleeping wing—sunlit and ventilated through a perforated cobogó, a type of concrete Brazilian screen, that spans the eastern facade—and upper living spaces is provided only by an exterior spiral staircase that juts out into the surrounding jungle. Seemingly floating among the trees, the upper platform hosts a pavilion containing the kitchen, dining room, and living room with sliding glass doors that can be opened to the furnished pool deck for a seamless indoor-outdoor experience. Contrasting the concrete structure, accessories and furniture by such Brazilian makers as José Bezerra, Israel Piaçava, Pedro Petry, and Sergio Rodrigues rendered in straw, leather, and wood craft warm interiors that celebrate national design and the residence’s immediate context.

Studio Arthur Casas Designs a Modernist Home Surrounded by Greenery in Brazil

2022 Best of Year Winner for Large City House

When clients, a young couple with two small children, came to Brazilian architect and Interior Design Hall of Fame member Arthur Casas, they had a small plot of land in São Paulo and a large list of desires. They wanted privacy from the street but as much usable outdoor space as possible. They wanted an open-plan kitchen and living area that would accommodate entertaining but also home offices for each of them. And they needed bedrooms for their children and guests as well as their own suite. Casas and his team gave them everything they asked for, and more, in a modernist 7,000-square-foot house tucked into lush greenery.

The ground floor flows out to an expansive terrace protected by the overhanging second floor. There, the facade incorporates a cobogó, a cast-concrete screen used throughout Brazil to modulate the strong sun. This custom version, cast on-site and tinted ochre, helps the upstairs rooms feel secluded while preserving views of the grounds and allowing fresh air to circulate.

Stunningly, additional outdoor space is provided on the house’s roof, a flat plane decked in wooden planks. It features a firepit surrounded by a built-in banquette on one end, a lap pool on the other—all bordered by more verdant landscaping.

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Studio Arthur Casas: arthur casas; regiane khristian; eduardo mikowski; biz braga; fernanda altemari; gabriel leitão; pedro brito.

This Horse Farm in Brazil Features Design Standouts by Studio Arthur Casas

You might call the fascination humans have for horses “primal.” After all, we have been captivated by them ever since we were cave dwellers and painted their images on the rock walls. Over the ages, they have remained a source of inspiration for artists—and architects. In fact, there may be no more iconic work of Latin American modernism than Cuadra San Cristóbal, a private residence and stable outside Mexico City designed in the 1960s by Luis Barragán, himself an avid equestrian. Stunning as the austere white house is, it’s the stable with its punched-out walls in rosy hues, trough waterfall, and L-shape exercise pool that most beguiles. The spare, artful arrangement of mass, space, and color brilliantly showcases the horses as if they were living sculpture. 

Continuing in that tradition is a new recreation complex that architect Arthur Casas recently completed at Coudelaria Rocas do Vouga, one of Brazil’s leading Lusitano horse studs, in the old colonial municipality of Itu, northwest of Saõ Paulo. The Lusitano is a majestic breed of ancient Portuguese origin, once prized as a war charger and now sought after for competitive sport and personal equitation. Casas’s brief encompassed indoor and outdoor spaces where the client could not only parade his purebreds but also entertain, hold meetings, and provide accommodations for visiting family, friends, and prospective buyers. 

The architect, who is known for fusing modernist and contemporary styles with tropical flair, responded with a comprehensive scheme that gives a nod to the Mexican master, while being wholly his own. “I always wanted to one day create a work where horses—for me the most beautiful animals—could be part of the scenery,” he confides.  

The Studio Arthur Casas principal is a longtime proponent of sustainable architecture. “If I could, I would create invisible works,” he says, “leaving nature to take the lead.” He studied the site carefully to optimize his plan’s potential for cross ventilation and natural illumination, reducing the need for air conditioning and artificial light. Quick construction was also of the essence, so Casas chose prefabricated steel frames for the structures, shortening building time to a mere 10 months and keeping waste to a minimum. 

Like his horses, the client is of Portuguese descent, and he continues to have strong ties to his ancestral country. With that heritage in mind, Casas conceived the complex as a pair of simple, low-slung buildings—a 9,700-square-foot entertainment pavilion and a 5,400-square-foot guesthouse—replete with courtyards and water features, classic elements in Portugal’s romantic old quintas. While the pavilion and guesthouse are strikingly contemporary in appearance, the materials used inside and out are evocative of those Iberian rural estates, with their stone walls, timber columns and beams, and azulejos, the flamboyantly patterned blue-and-white tin-glazed tiles seen throughout the country. Keen that the complex also blend with the landscape, Casas sourced many of his materials locally and adhered to a palette of earthy tones. The different textures and hues of the rough stone, carbonized pine, and burnt concrete are what gives his design a rustic, yet sophisticated character. 

Handsome as the complex is by day, it’s even more stunning as night falls. Ground-level spotlights bathe the exterior stone walls, accentuating their surface textures, while recessed floodlights in the ceiling softly illuminate the interior, with table and floor lamps providing an additional warm glow. When a fire blazes in the central hearth and the Lusitanos are put through their paces in the gathering dusk outside, guests may well experience the same primal stirrings of wonder that our ancestors must have felt when the flickering firelight played across the horses painted on their cave walls. 

Studio Arthur Casas: nara telles, rafael palombo, gabriel leitão, paulina tabet, camila dalloca, marcos retzer, raul valadão, amanda tamburus

renata rilli paisagismo: landscape consultant

mingrone iluminação: lighting consultant

osborne construtora: general contractor

viúva lamego: wall tile (entry)

etel design: coffee tables (sitting area), center tables (home theater)

micasa: sofas (sitting area, home theater)

boobam: folded-steel side tables (sitting area, home theater)

dpot: armchair (sitting area), side chairs, bar stool (dining area)

herança cultural design art gallery: lounge chair, ottoman (sitting area), round tables (dining area), table lamp (guest room)

studio objeto: table lamp (sitting area), bench (guest room)

blackball: pool table (games area)

arquivo vivo: caster chairs (dining area)

oswaldo antiques: armchair (guest room)

BY KAMY: RUG

curtains emporium: custom headboard

arthur casas for trousseau: bed cover

deca: sink, sink fittings (bathroom)

l’oeil: chaise longues, side table (swimming pool)

corcovado, kvadratt, uniflex: upholstery and curtain fabric

la novitá: upholstery leather

Diogo Aguiar Studio Creates an Ode to Adico’s Iconic Steel Chair to Celebrate the Brand’s Centennial

Inspired by the easy energy of seaside esplanades, the Portuguese chair has been an iconic fixture in Iberian daily life since furniture manufacturer Adico began producing the steel stacking seat in the 1920’s. (The joke is everyone in Portugal has sat in one.) To celebrate the centennial of the company, which has played a major role in the development of its hometown, Avanca, the enclosing city of Estarreja commissioned Diogo Aguiar Studio to create a commemorative monument in a municipal park.

The Porto-based architectural firm conceived Círculo Azul, a permanent installation comprising 40 of the ubiquitous chairs rendered in stainless steel, powder-coated International Klein Blue, and arranged in a 33-foot-diameter circle. Because the site regularly floods in winter, however, the chair legs are dramatically elongated, raising the structure 6 feet into the air and out of harm’s way. “Partially submerged, it creates reflections in the water,” principal Diogo Aguiar reports. At other times, parkgoers can access the lofty perches via ladders welded to the front legs, while the back legs extend outward like guy ropes supporting a circus tent. “It’s a monument designed to be activated by people,” Aguiar explains, and an intimate circle that offers an inviting place to not only come together, converse, and watch performances but also reflect quietly above the park landscape from a familiar seat with an inspiring new point of view.