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2024

MCHAP

CASA 350

BLOCO ARQUITETOS ASSOCIADOS

Brasília, Distrito Federal, Brazil

May 2022

PRIMARY AUTHOR

MATHEUS CONQUE SECO FERREIRA (ARCHITECT AND PARTNER), DANIEL MANGABEIRA DA VINHA (ARCHITECT AND PARTNER)

CONTRIBUTING AUTHOR

HENRIQUE EDUARDO CALDAS COUTINHO (ARCHITECT AND PARTNER), GIOVANNI PAULO CRISTOFARO (PROJECT MANAGER), VICTOR ÁLVARES ALBERTO ALENCAR MACHADO (ARCHITECT LEVEL III)

CLIENT

JOSÉ HENRIQUE FERREIRA GONÇALVES

PHOTOGRAPHER

HARUO MIKAMI

OBJECTIVE

The house’s program was organized in two perpendicularly overlapping volumes with a regular 350x350cm grid (hence the name of the house) in steel structure. Most of the columns are located in the perimeter of each volume. The social and areas are located on the ground floor, with its two largest sides facing north and south, where the swimming pool is located. Meanwhile, the upper volume houses the bedrooms, with all of its openings facing the morning sun. Two sections with 7-meter-long cantilevered ceilings at each end of the upper floor create covered areas on the ground floor that serve as an extension to the veranda on one side and a carport on the other side. Motorized, retractable and translucent awnings were positioned in all the openings. They allow the control of natural light and adjustment of the desired privacy. While all the floors on the grond floor level were built in cast-in-place concrete, the floor slabs on the 1st floor and the roof are built as “steel decks”. All internal walls are “dry-walls” , while all walls on the external perimeter of the house were made of common masonry.

CONTEXT

The project started with the demand for a house that could be built in the shortest possible time. All its modulation, finishing options and choice of structural materials are based on this premise. The option to use a metallic structure was therefore due to the available budget, the availability of raw materials on the market at the time of the project and the speed for assembling the structure. On the other hand, other secondary items of the work, such as the wooden ceilings and ground floor floors, were assembled and built by local labor. In this way, the Casa 350 project combines a mostly prefabricated construction with small parts made by hand. The prefabricated portion of the project helped accelerate the process of construction with minimum of staff during the pandemic period. The whole building was concluded in 20 months. The site is located inside a residential area of the city, far away from the city center. It sits inside a small gated community consisting of 5 plots of land with 2500sq meter each.

PERFORMANCE

The combination of industrialized structure and building parts and traditional manual skills for certain parts of the construction could bring together the desired speed of construction and less production of construction waste with the still existing craftsmanship of the local labor. This combination was especially useful during the pandemic period, when construction sites all over the country were allowed to continue. Moreover, sophisticated industrialized construction methods of homes are still rare in Brazil, so this experience adds to the existing needs and possibilities of building homes faster and more efficiently in the country.

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