Sao Paulo, Brazil
Studio MK27 has designed Casa Azul—an impressive residential project located within the Brazilian rainforest in Guarujá, Brazil.
Marcio Kogan’s Casa Azul, as it is named, can be considered a study of sustainable architecture and contemporary Brazilian architecture that boasts of natural materials, craftsmanship, and an inherent reverence for both the past and nature.
The native authorities were strict about this particular development. As a result, it took about two years to safe the specified environmental company approvals, which mandated a 2m-wide protecting bubble past the footprint of the house to protect the woodland from the development process.
Officers have been on the web page day-to-day to check out the effect of the undertaking on the surrounding plant life, however, Marcio Kogan, Diana Radomysler, and their co-designer Samanta Cafardo have been more than pleased to conform to strict environmental oversight, and to head even additional.
The house is nestled at the edge of the Atlantic Forest, a mere 500m away from the stunning Iporanga Beach.
As this can be considered a relatively small building, Studio MK27 had to rethink its long-held beliefs about residential scale.
The practice’s projects are typically long, low-slung structures that sit in elegant humility on the landscape, always deferring to nature.
In this case, the aforementioned environmental restrictions meant going slightly more vertical, which has been done with impressive results.
While the house is taller than typical Studio MK27 projects, it has an incredibly light visual presence, its almost transparent structure living in harmony with nature from the bottom up.
The ground floor is a wooden deck in an enchantingly amorphous shape, entirely open to the surrounding forest.
It pays homage to the work of legendary Brazilian landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx and offers an intentional contrast with the rectangular concrete boxes above.
While the form of the decking is reminiscent of Marx’s works, it was driven as much by a dedication to preserving every single existing tree on the parcel – an amenity valued even more than having a larger swimming pool.
The first level has a telescoping glass-panel system on both sides of the building, giving the house its transparent look and feel, as well as energy-saving cross-ventilation.
The concrete box creates an open, loft-style floor plan that includes the kitchen and living spaces – frames views of the crowns that top the surrounding trees, and functions as a large patio when the windows are fully open.
The second level consists of four bedrooms, each looking out over the rainforest’s canopy.
This floor stands out for its elegant wooden screens, mounted in front of glass panels.
The screens are a functional and cultural nod to the traditional light-diffusing muxarabi screens that were originally brought to southern Portugal by the invading Moors in the eighth century and which would eventually become part of the Portuguese aesthetic that was imported to Brazil.
Studio MK27 originally wanted to paint the muxarabi screens in their traditional light blue, the same color that accents most of the historic Portuguese colonial structures across the country, hence the name Casa Azul.
However, the team eventually opted for a natural wood finish on the screens to further blend the house with the forest, rather than draw a contrast.
Project: Casa Azul
Architects: Studio MK27
Lead Architects: Marcio Kogan and Samanta Cafardo
Interior Designer : Diana Radomysler
Client: Private
Photographers: Andre Scarpa
