Lofty Ambitions
The sleek interiors of this sprawling home in Brazil becomes the ideal backdrop to a covetable collection of art and furniture
This house corresponds to the ambitions and life project of a young heir and collector. The site, exhaustively searched, is located in Curitiba, Paraná, beside Brazil’s Graciosa Country Club, the most exclusive club with the city’s most centrally located golf course. Its particularities—dimensions, format, legislation and neighbourhood— shaped and conditioned several design decisions. The idea of a house for large parties and receptions was also central in the project development. Entirely built with reinforced concrete, the house is a vision of alternative powerful architecture—the building has a volume that commands attention but it is without the conventional stylistic concessions.
Design challenges came in the form of the relatively small 12,916sqft lot, and the triangular shape with one side in an arch. A narrow strip of maintenance sheds of the golf course along a high wall would only allow the desired views from the second floor of the house. The vertical guideline of the project came from the relationship between the difficulties presented by the lot, together with the most important requirement of the client: to make the most out of the views of the golf course. As a result, the main areas of the house were located from the second floor of the building and above. The house consists of five floors—the ground floor and four more. On the ground and the first floors are accesses, the patio and car shelter, services, staff apartment and facilities, and an independent entrance from the same square that accesses the house and the gallery for the private collection. The gallery space was not included in the initial scope of the project. The main idea was to install the artworks among the different spaces of the residence. However, due to the sprawling space in the first floor and the presence of many large-scale art pieces in the collection, the designers proposed creating a gallery, an idea that quickly grew on the client. The exhibition space was installed in a “T” shape plan with double-height ceiling, with one leg of the “T” reserved for a garden between walls, planned for sculpture exhibitions, a water mirror and water garden. Directly above this gallery is a roof garden in a glass box. Two floors above ground, it is accessible from the floor of the rooms and from the main hall.
The homeowner started building his contemporary art collection 20 years ago, which was also the time when the owner assigned the design firm to work on his first apartment. It started with a series of local artists from the 1980s, and gradually grew to include both local and internationally acclaimed artists. Today, it is a reference to local museums as well as prominent Brazilian artists. The approximately 18,836sqft house was designed for the couple and their two daughters. Apart from the vehicle access, the ground floor houses a large square that is partially covered by the massive glass box and gives access to the main lobby and to the private art gallery. The three upper floors can be accessed in three different ways: by lift or ramps to the main areas, and by stairs to the service areas. Moving up two floors from the main lobby on the ground floor, one arrives at the level where the rooms are. Magenta woodwork dominates the space with 26 metres of window that offer the first views of the golf course and access to the secret garden. The latter contains three species of Pau-ferro (Caesalpinia Ferrea), a native tree from the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. This floor is dedicated to the daughters’ rooms and the guest room, as well as the home’s daily-use rooms, such as the main kitchen, which is connected to the other two kitchens by a freight elevator. There is a further fourth kitchen for staff use. The third floor contains the larger spaces and is the floor dedicated to bigger family gatherings and large receptions. It is also the floor with the double-height glass box, which runs transversally through the large concrete block, looking over the golf course at one end and facing the city skyline at the other. This floor also houses the master suite, with access to the secret garden which has an external staircase leading to the rooftop swimming pool, and the side terrace with views of the golf course.
The fourth floor accommodates social and family activities for daytime use, such as the deck and swimming pool, lounge and bar, all of which offer broad views of the golf course, plus the sauna and kitchen with barbecue grill for casual lunches. The pool is covered in glass mosaic from an original drawing by the artist Paolo Ridolfi. It was executed, disassembled and boxed in São Paulo, and brought to Curitiba for its final installation. The internal space, in the mezzanine between the two voids of the glass box, houses a table for a DJ and a dance floor. The plastic language adopted emphasises the volume of solid blocks made out of reinforced concrete in this work of addition and subtraction of masses, where the circulation tunnels of the ramps and the vertical circulation volumes of the stairs rip the main body of the building, causing the facades to be represented by the circulations that run through the building. The front facade, more volumetric and sculptural, has few openings as opposed to the glass box, aerial and transparent, which covers the triple-height entrance square. This is where two stainless steel doors are—one to access the house and the other to access the private gallery—with the background of a 12-metre high U-glass cladding. The rear facade, more extroverted and permeable, is volumetrically more stirred, conditioned by the shape and proportions of the site and by the urban legislation. It includes several openings and terraces for better integration with the landscape. The furniture, a mix of pieces by top designers including Le Corbusier brought from the homeowner’s previous houses and a collection of Brazilian copyrighted modernist and contemporary furniture created by leading architects and designers of the 20th century and the present generation, completes the picture. Together with the spectacular nature views and the impressive art collection, it makes this home perfect for entertaining.