This Home Sits on an Exclusive São Paolo Golf Course

The 3,000-acre upscale community of Fazenda Boa Vista is in Porto Feliz, about an hour from São Paulo, but a world away from the megacity’s relentless bustle. Envisioned by JHSF, developers of Brazil’s most exclusive shopping enclaves as well as its luxurious Fasano hotel group, the resort has become a favorite escape for well-heeled Paulistanos who prefer a weekend in bucolic horse country over the beach. A quarter of the site’s rolling green hillsides are preserved as pristine native forests and shimmering lakes. But the real attraction for weekenders-at-play are its abundant amenities and activities: two 18-hole golf courses, an equestrian center, a spa, tennis center, hiking and cycling trails, even a working farm and a kids’ club with an indoor skating rink.

This ambitious country idyll, its name translating roughly to beautiful view farm, has tapped some of Brazil’s best talents for its architecture. Isay Weinfeld conceived the Fasano hotel on the property, the equestrian center, and several neighborhoods of Fasano-branded residences. Other districts feature houses by Marcio Kogan and Uruguayan architect Carolina Proto. Add to the list of South American design luminaries Interior Design Hall of Fame member Arthur Casas, who designed a weekend villa for a São Paulo family overlooking the green expanses of one of Fazenda Boa Vista’s golf courses. Coincidentally, Studio Arthur Casas also did the home next door. Maintaining privacy–and aesthetic distinctions–between the two structures was key for the architect.

Inside a Weekend Retreat by Studio Arthur Casas

“I wanted this house to have its own identity,” Casas begins. The boxy, linear three-story home brings to life many of the signature elements of Casas’s work, especially dramatic spaces that smoothly integrate indoors and out by opening themselves completely to the surrounding landscape. In this house, a sprawling 14,000 square feet, the public rooms open onto a terrace extending the length of the swimming pool, then stepping down to a wooden deck, and finally a lush lawn bordering a golf course sand trap. The terrace, finished in large-format ceramic tiles, is a unifying element as well as a dividing line between the natural and architectural worlds.

Starkly different facade materials distinguish the base of the structure from the upper floor. The lower levels, which contain entertaining spaces, the main bedroom suite, a home office, gym, and a subgrade sauna with lounge, is finished in a rustic material typical of this region of the countryside. Hefts of granitelike Brazilian Moledo were cut on-site from larger pieces and set into a sandy mortar with wide gaps between the stones.

The upper level is clad entirely–from its pitched roof to the exterior walls–in horizontal slats of autoclaved pine that’s been injection-dyed to a carbonized finish. The same slatting finishes the flat roof of the ground-level living room and wraps onto the room’s angled interior ceiling. Window shutters on the five upstairs bedrooms pivot open to shade small balconies, creating privacy while letting in fresh air. When closed, the shutters blend with the exterior siding to render the upper floor a seamless wood-shrouded box, a favorite detail of Casas. “They merge with the facade so they’re practically imperceptible,” he explains. A metal arm locks each shutter, which is fitted with a counterweight for easy maneuvering, at fixed angles of 90, 45, and 30 degrees.

How the Home Design Reflects Architectural Traditions

Throughout the house, Casas hewed to materials and finishes that “highlight the rusticity of a country house,” as the architect describes it. Suede, leather, cotton and linen fabrics, and natural-fiber and kilim rugs complement architectural surfaces in pine, porcelain, and ceramic. Furnishings are a mix of contemporary and vintage, mostly from Brazil. Casas’s own Jaky dining table joins his Três Toras table, which resembles a bundle of polished wood logs atop an andironlike curved metal base, in the living room, where there are also sculptural armchairs by Ricardo Fasanello, José Zanine Caldas, and Sergio Rodrigues. Collections of artisanal objects in the main bedroom and displays of rough-hewn ceramics reinforce the rustic-chic vibe. For Casas, such details—along with natural finishes and materials and a soft, neutral interior palette—are as much a part of the home’s sensitivity to the landscape as the building. As Casas puts it, “It’s an architecture that is respectful of its environment.”

Explore the Indoor-Outdoor Vacation Home

studio arthur casas: nara telles; rafael palombo; fabíola andrade; marcos retzer; raimundo borges; diogo mondini; fernanda altemari; ana beatriz braga; luis lourenço; ana maria pedreschi; susana brolhani; claire dayan; julia sampaio; vinicius fadel; giovana micheloni; amanda tamburus; augusto godoi.

om studio: lighting consultant.

dedicatto: custom furniture work­shop, woodwork.

epson: general contractor.

lattoog: woven chair (terrace).

micasa: sofa (living room), desk (office).

etel design: chair, otto­man (main bedroom).

through dpot objeto; through espasso: furniture.

pedra moledo: stone walls.

manufatti: brise-soleil.

exbra: ceramic coatings.

Rubén Valdez, Yashar Yektajo Architects, and B-Huber Turn Up the Heat With a Desert-Inspired Resort in Baja California Sur, Mexico

Louis Kahn meets the casbah. Architecturally, that’s the vibe at Paradero Todos Santos, a new 35-room resort property north of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico: solemn concrete volumes enclosing a 5-acre desert oasis nestled between the rugged Sierra de la Laguna Mountains and the pristine Pacific-coast beach of Las Palmas. With 200-year-old Cardon cacti, thousands of palm trees, and farmland as far as the eye can see, UNESCO has designated the village of Todos Santos a biosphere reserve, one of only two such sites in Baja California Sur.

“We were looking to create a different relationship with nature than at a typical hotel,” begins architect Rubén Valdez, who partnered with local firm Yashar Yektajo Architects on the competition-winning proposal for the project, “to express luxury not necessarily as a material idea, but as an experience.” A pair of two-story wings, containing a single flank of guest rooms separated by curving staircases open to the sky, frame a courtyard garden. There, low concrete pavilions housing an open-air restaurant and the Ojo de Agua Spa are tucked among the towering palms and low-slung desert grasses and cacti.

This rethinking of luxury synchs with the ethos of Paradero Hotels, a fledgling Mexico City–based hospitality company focused on creating community-minded and adventure-centric inns. At the Todos Santos property, Paradero’s first, experiences include surfing, hiking, mountain biking, farming and gardening talks, visits to local artists’ studios, and taco-tasting tours.

Valdez and Yashar Yektajo drew inspiration from the cloisters that Jesuit missionaries from Spain established throughout Baja California in the 17th and 18th centuries. Occupants set up farms in the courtyards of these remote compounds to protect themselves and their crops from animals. For Paradero Todos Santos, the architects turned this historic precedent inside-out, with guest rooms turning their backs to the courtyard gardens toward broad vistas of the rugged landscape. “The Spanish created this typology to protect themselves from nature, but we did the opposite, completely opening to the landscape,” notes Valdez, who splits his time between his studio in Lausanne, Switzerland, and projects around Mexico. “We minimized the building footprint and maximized the gardens,” Yektajo explains. “It’s a compact framework but it feels quite generous.”

Collaborating with Valdez and Yektajo was designer Bibiana Huber, a former classmate of Valdez’s at the Tecnológico de Monterrey and CEO and creative director of Guadalajara-based studio B-Huber. In the project’s early days, the three worked together to figure out the tonality of the poured-in-place concrete that dominates the architecture of Paradero. “We thought it was important that the buildings feel like they emerged from the earth,” Huber states. Adding to the effect are spaces like Ojo de Agua’s garden pavilions, where floors are simply compacted earth—no concrete or tile of any kind. The approach complements the spa’s focus on ancient Mexican healing traditions, such as sound healing and Temazcal ceremonies, and amenities like hot and cold plunge pools.

Not only does the hotel feel firmly rooted in the landscape; being there makes guests feel like they are always outdoors, in nature. The public spaces, including the restaurant, lounge, and spa, are all open to the elements. “The only properly indoor spaces are the guest rooms,” Valdez says. Even then, visitors must exit their sleeping quarters, through a terrace, to reach the bathroom. It’s a detail the design team concedes is not for everyone, though it has its charms. “It pushes you to experience the landscape,” Yektajo suggests. “It’s special in that you don’t see boundaries between inside and outside,” Huber adds. “For us, luxury is not about shiny materials. It’s about being immersed in nature, being totally connected with the stars.”

Her subtle, textured furnishings balance Valdez and Yektajo’s admittedly rustic architecture. “After a day full of ex­periences off-site, you want to come home to a comfortable place,” Huber says. “Paradero is totally loose—comfortable and chic in a feet-in-the-sand kind of way.” Her firm designed nearly all the hotel’s furniture, textiles, and lamps. Most was handcrafted in Mexico, including woven throws and duvets from Oaxaca, palm rugs and rattan lamps from Jalisco, and lamps from a town near Guadalajara. Their chromatic tones draw from the subtle palette of the surrounding landscape. “Everything is neutral, but with touches of color that echo the greens of the vegetation, the grays of the earth, the colors of the stones and mountains,” Huber continues. “It blends together all the senses.”

Social interaction is highly encouraged at Paradero Todos Santos, as evidenced by elements like the restaurant’s communal dining tables and an abundance of ottomans and loungers at poolside that are meant to be easily rearranged for daytime sunning or nighttime cocktails under the abundant stars. “The experience invites visitors to interact as a community. It feels like a village,” Huber says. “The architecture of the rooms and pavilions surround and embrace the center, which is where the magic happens.” “A lot of resorts are interchangeable,” concludes Valdez. “But this one wouldn’t make sense anywhere else.” The familial environment is as much a spirit of the place as the striking Baja California landscape.

B-Huber: Rossana Fernandez; Omar Godinez ; Aldo Ortíz; Martha Fernandez

Polen: Landscape Architect

Jorge Pérez’s Private Collection on Display at One Park Grove in Miami by OMA and Meyer Davis

“Let’s build sculpture.” That’s how Will Meyer, principal of Meyer Davis, recalls the design team of One Park Grove—the last of three towers to be built in a Coconut Grove, Miami, waterfront residential complex—being rallied by Jorge Pérez, chairman of Related Group, which co-developed the project with Terra Group. “Jorge didn’t say, ‘Let’s build a box and decorate it,’” Meyer notes. “It’s a totally different approach to design.”

Pérez, one of Miami’s preeminent art collectors (his name graces the Pérez Art Museum Miami by Herzog & de Meuron) assembled an all-star lineup to bring One Park Grove to life. OMA, led by partner Shohei Shigematsu, envisioned the tower’s undulating architecture of exterior concrete columns that swell and contract like the trunks of royal palm trees. Studio Sofield designed the understated kitchens and bathrooms in the residences.

Landscape architect Enzo Enea laid out the parklike grounds, which cover 5 acres and include an outdoor amphitheater, a ribbon of swimming pools, and a sculpture park. And celebrity event planner Colin Cowie programmed services and experiences from music playlists to poolside towel and sunscreen selections.

Meyer Davis’s charge was designing the tower’s lobby, amenity spaces (more than 50,000 square feet of them, including a screening room, spa, and wine room), and other public areas, incorporating artwork from Pérez’s extensive private collection. “There are a lot of branded towers in Miami, but this one has a real personality,” co-principal Gray Davis says. “It touches on all the sensory points that make an enjoyable experience and give the project a real soul.”

Meyer Davis senior project manager Sonya Cheng calls One Park Grove’s interiors “bohemia on the bay.” That’s a reference to Coconut Grove’s long history—it’s the city’s oldest neighborhood—and reputation as Miami’s free-spirited artistic and intellectual hub. Onetime abode of John Singer Sargent, Tennesse Williams, and Joni Mitchell, the Grove, as it’s known, is home to the city’s top private schools and the former Coconut Grove Playhouse. The neighborhood also happens to be one of the city’s leafiest, with a dense tree canopy that stretches to the shores of Biscayne Bay. “I thought we should provide something of the essence of Coconut Grove, immersed in nature and maximizing exposure to light and air,” Shigematsu says of the 23-story tower’s 68 residences, which he likens to “stacked villas.”

Shigematsu cites another influence on OMA’s architecture: Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s 1983 Surrounded Islands, where they wrapped an archipelago of tiny islets in nearby Biscayne Bay in sheets of hot-pink polypropylene. Cheng also mentions the installation as influencing how the lobby interiors negotiate the tower’s unique peanut-shape footprint—pinched at the center with two elevator cores—and multiple grade changes. Similar to the way the islands were encircled with concentric bands of pink fabric, the designers layered ribbons of stone flooring that radiate outward from the core. “Where all those lines converge and intersect, we created ‘islands’ of seating groups,” Cheng explains. Patterned rugs ground those sitting areas—Meyer describes them as “moments of serenity, the residual between waves”—as they float between the core and the lobby’s curved glass exterior. The language of undulating forms continues vertically, with core walls clad in slats of white oak and others hosting a palisade of backlit white panels. “It’s not a traditional layout—it’s organic and really out there,” Meyer acknowledges. “It was hard to describe to people who weren’t on the team exactly what we were doing. It’s really a new language with its own logic, rules, and geometry, but it creates its own sense of space.”

Positioning large sculptures from Pérez’s collection also directed Meyer, Davis, and Cheng’s choreography of the lobby’s interior. At times, circulation took a backseat to art placement, in which Pérez played an enthusiastically active role. “Sometimes, we’d pick a spot and Jorge would say, ‘No, this piece works better over there,’” Cheng recalls. Sometimes the team accompanied Pérez to his private storage facility to preview artworks, other times to the art museum in downtown Miami. “We turned the typical design process upside down to achieve a different result,” Meyer notes.

An early recommendation was South African artist Ledelle Moe’s ensemble work Memorial Collapse, a trio of monumental heads, laid on their sides, with rebar emerging through the concrete. “When Jorge suggested those, our response was a resounding ‘Hell, yeah!’” Meyer recalls. “He gets really excited about art. When he sees the direction a designer or architect is going in, he wants them to take it as far as they can. If you lean in on his spirit, you get results.”

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Other works populating One Park Grove’s public spaces run a gamut of styles and media. Outside in the gardens, Jaume Plensa’s The Poets in Bordeaux (Body Soul God, Country, Water Fire), which comprises three 35-foot poles topped by illuminated resin busts, changes appearance as the lights cycle through different colors. Interior amenity spaces feature more subtle works, including delicate vellum drawings by Miami-based artist Michele Oka Doner and a Richard Serra etching.

One Park Grove’s well-orchestrated blend of architecture, design, and art bears an ultimate stamp of approval: Earlier this year, Pérez, who has lived on the Coconut Grove waterfront for decades, decided to trade in his Venetian palazzo-style mansion for a penthouse at One Park Grove. He donated the $33 million proceeds from the sale of his house to The Miami Foundation.

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meyer davis: scott abrahams; matthew haseltine; cass nakashima; nils sanderson; daeho lee; matthew edgardo davis; jeremy kim; gonzalo lopez; pantea tehrani; sumit sahdev; jun shimada; andrew mack; miguel darcy; betty fan; carly dean; ahmadreza schricker; britt johnson; shida salehi-esmati; jackie woon bae; ian watchorn; filippo nanni; esin erez; luke willis: oma. mei lau; drew tucker; marianne mordhorst

arquitectonica: architect of record.

arredoluce; enea garden design; plant the future: landscaping consultant

south dade lighting: lighting consultant

desimone consulting engineers: structural engineer

feller engineering: mep

vsn engineering: civil engineer

allegheny millwork; miles of wood: woodwork

excellence in stone: stonework

american upholstery: custom upholstered-goods workshop.

moriarty: general contractor

stripe vintage modern: blue armchairs (lobby)

Stellar Works: nesting tables

f&r general interiors: custom console (lobby), table (wine room)

apparatus studio: pendant fixtures (reception)

steel monkey dream shop: custom shelving (reception, lobby)

gabriel scott: pendant fixtures (lobby)

tacchini: round side tables

liaigre: floor lamp

the future perfect: modular coffee tables

phillips collection: side table

bec brittain: pendant fixture

harbour: sofa, chairs, coffee table (cabana)

marset: floor lamp

metalarte: table lamp

berhardt design: console (spa), pendant fixture (playroom)

usona: chaise longues (spa)

hbf textiles: wallcovering (screening room)

ludwig & larsen: sconces

sacco carpet: custom carpet

kravet: chair fabric

jab anstoetz: pillow fabric

opuzen: drapery fabric

tri-kes: custom wallcovering (playroom)

tommy bahama: pillows

wine cellar innovations: custom lockers (wine room)

le lampade: ceiling fixture

tailor-made textiles: custom rugs

benjamin moore & co.; scuffmaster: paint