A São Paulo Abode by FCstudio Prioritizes Outdoor Living

2022 Best of Year Winner for Small City House

If you live in São Paulo, a city with a subtropical climate, you want as much outdoor living space as possible. Which is exactly why Casa Bento was commissioned. Its owners, a fortysomething couple who also work together, were frustrated by the limitations of their previous residence. A traditional house with conventional rooms, there was no flow between the various domestic spaces, much less with the surrounding garden. The couple, who have two young daughters, now 10 and 6 years old, dreamed of a home where they could indulge their love of entertaining family and friends—indoors and out.

Enter architect Flavio Castro, who founded his firm FCstudio with the conviction that architecture should be responsive to the ways people live—and that those ways are always changing. The clients had acquired a lot for their dream house on Rua Bento de Andrade—hence the name Casa Bento—the very street where both had grown up, in the highly de­sirable Jardim Paulista neighborhood. It’s a verdant section of the city, but also a busy and crowded one. So chief among Castro’s initial concerns was to conceive a plan that would exclude the bustle of the street and views of adjacent neighbors, while still feeling open, airy, and fully integrated into a lushly landscaped property.

FCstudio designs an airy, urban retreat

The architect’s solution, a 4,560-square-foot, two-story structure that sits in the middle of the walled lot, resembles a metal box perched on thick board-formed concrete sidewalls. The ground-floor end facades are fully glazed, a transparency that visually links the entry hall with the parking courtyard in the front and merges the indoor and outdoor living areas in the back. The second story, by contrast, is clad in folded steel lamina—the same material used for the street fence, a large part of which pivots upward like a giant garage door to admit cars—and topped with a narrow clerestory. During the day, the upper level presents a blank face to passersby, but at night it’s crowned by a halolike band of light.

The metal box opens up at the back, however, where a continuous ribbon of sliding glass windows runs across most of the rear facade before turning the corner to extend along part of the sidewall. The glazing encloses the main bedroom, admitting abundant natural light along with views of the green garden oasis below. The windows are fitted with enormous shutters that form a striking brise-soleil, which not only deflects the often-intense sun but also provides complete privacy and quiet when fully closed. The structure’s pivoting vanes are made of Cor-Ten steel—as is the front door—a favorite material of Castro’s since it’s honest, weathers well in the local climate, and has a handsome texture and color that harmonize with the house’s concrete, steel, and surrounding greenery.

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A spacious patio for entertaining outdoors

The São Paulo home offers plenty of space to play

A long corridor down the side of the house leads to the daughters’ bedrooms and the main suite beyond. Each of the girls’ rooms features a platform bed playfully enclosed by a painted-steel frame in the form of a gable roof; built-in storage closets and drawers line the opposite wall. The children also have a play area in the basement, which is reached by a floating concrete stair as strikingly sculptural as its steel counterpart on the floor above. Staff quarters, service areas, and storage spaces are also found on this level.

Casa Bento may have been named for its street address, but the house has more than a little in common with the traditional Japanese lunch box its moniker evokes. Both achieve a masterful balance of the functional and the aesthetic—each a microcosm in which every element has its perfectly judged place.

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fcstudio: joão felipe falqueto; leonardo rosa; erica miranda

creatto: woodwork

mezas: table (patio)

indiodacosta: chairs

Luminii: pendant fixtures (dining area)

dpot: chairs (dining area), bench (living area)

by kami: rug (living area)

casual móveis: table lamp (kitchen), side table (garden), floor lamp (theater)

casual exteriores: lounges (garden)

vitra: elephant stool (child’s room)

tapetah: rugs (child’s room, theater)

estúdio líder design: armchair, ottoman (main bedroom)

braston: cement floor tile

taúna: wood flooring

suvinil: paint

esquadralum: windows

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