Casa Trem | ARKITITO Arquitetura

Ideas don't come about by chance. This project, an artist couple's atelier house, starts with an implantation: placing the construction in the natural clearings of the regenerated forest terrain, in the municipality of Cotia, on the urban fringe of Sao Paulo city.

A flat, single-storey construc on was chosen to facilitate people's interac on and the transporta on of art pieces and materials. The gentle topography would leave the house elevated at some points, a mix of groundedness and aerial views of the vegeta on. Slim, tall trees.

The aligned natural clearings allowed for a single volume to follow this organic path. But in the case of this house, organic but straight: 4 aligned rectangular volumes slightly rotated, connected only by the floor, crea ng a sequence of solid and void spaces. In the sec ons of this large parallelepiped, glass enclosures highlight the idea of solidity and lightness. Raw light.

A train passes nearby, unseen but heard by its whistle.

Thus, the structure was defined: load-bearing concrete bases, transversal to the volumes, emerging from the ground, and above them, two 30cm metal beams that cover the en re approximately 50m route. A track that receives concrete panel slabs. The slab alone manages to overcome the lateral overhangs of the volume to emphasize the idea of floa ng. Structural walls of 20cm wide concrete blocks with reinforcements and grounting help with the nega ve effort of the roof slab.

Internally, the blocks were le? exposed, as well as the roof slab and the high-resistance concrete floor. The few coa ng points were made with hydraulic  les in different colours: floors marking the axes of rota on of the volumes with pink  les, and bathrooms and laundry rooms with blue and green. On the outside, the boxes received dark rubberized paint that blends with the black frames. A large volume that makes its presence felt in the forest, but does not detract from its shine.

Nature provides the thermal balance of the house: ensuring fresh air freely flows through the 4m high volumes during the hottest periods, and glazed parts receive special insula on during cold periods and can retain their heat. Thermal iner a guaranteed by the volume's solidity. The house lifed from the ground avoids contact with the earth's water and allows life to pass underneath.

Photography: Fran Parente

Website: http://franparente.com/