Conclusion Year: 2018
Built Area: 896 m²
Landscaping: Alex Hanazaki
About Studio Guilherme Torres
Founded in 2001, Studio Guilherme Torres develops projects in the most diverse areas, from architecture to design. This company is personified in the figure of its founder, a perfectionist. On his left arm, a great tattoo says, through the words extracted from a Daft Punk’s song, “work it, harder, better, faster, make it over”. This unofficial motto describes your ethics and commitment to quality which is readily apparent in your work.
Minimal details and palettes of rich but reserved materials that characterize his work are consistently applied in single-family homes, interior projects, and retail projects Balancing the rigorous aesthetics of architecture, a certain playful lightness can be found in the interior design of your projects.
The crisp shapes and subtle surfaces provide a suitably quiet backdrop to the lively furniture inside, while carefully planned spaces benefit from astute attention to natural light. Suspended volumes and few but notable lines are its trademarks that seek, in his projects, to investigate the limits of materials.
The 2,700 m² plot of land in a condominium in Cotia , in the metropolitan region of São Paulo, presented an attraction and a challenge: a century-old fig tree nailed in the center of the plot. Also known as the Tree of Life, it is the first plant described in the Bible, when Adam and Eve used its leaves to sew their clothes, after eating the fruit of knowledge. It symbolizes chastity, morality and immortality.
Designed for a mature couple, who occasionally receive their children who live abroad, the entire program of the house was distributed around the tree, which has a crown diameter of 15 meters. The lot had a steep slope in relation to the street level, which became a feature of the project. When traveling through the condominium roads, the construction mimics the landscaping.
The blocks were distributed around the patio created around the fig tree and were organized by their functions. A large structure in corten steel forms the roof of the garage, which also delimits the access to the residence. To bridge the gap between the garage and the rest of the building, a yellow plurigoma ramp gently leads to the living room volume, which opens onto both the patio and the pool area. Perpendicular to this volume, another prism organizes the bedroom sector.
The materials were applied in their natural state, such as corten steel and exposed concrete on the wall that anchors the ramp. In contrast to these brutalist materials, travertine marble and white planes create subtle frames, leaving in the foreground the exuberance of the existing landscape, which guided the entire project – a tropical and particular Eden.
