2024
MCHAP.emerge
Casa São João da Boa Vista
vão
São João da Boa Vista, São Paulo, Brazil
September 2021
PRIMARY AUTHOR
Anna Juni (architect), Enk te Winkel / Gustavo Delonero (architects)
CONTRIBUTING AUTHOR
André Nunes (architect), Deborah Caseiro (intern), Julio Shalders (intern), Marcelo Jun (intern), Victoria Menezes (intern
CLIENT
José Francisco de Siqueira Neto
PHOTOGRAPHER
Javier Agustín Rojas
OBJECTIVE
The most non-negotiable premise put forward by the clients was related to privacy: the house could not have any windows to the outside, from where they could be seen by family members and visits from their parents, who lived in the neighboring house.
This unconventional request led to the creation of a central courtyard, onto which the five inflected volumes open. High windows were positioned on the external faces, bringing only the framed treetops into the house.
The volumes were built with ordinary raw materials (whitewashed ceramic blocks and bricks) and are anchored to the ground by concrete abutments, which protrude throughout the foundation and accommodate the different levels. Another organizing element of the topography, the stone walls work either as a retaining wall or as a delimitation of the other two free spaces (patios).
Because of the hot climate, the roof was layered: the exposed wooden skeleton supports metal tiles below the slate. This strategy was designed to reduce solar incidence and increase the thermal inertia of the house, as well as the double walls with 45º brick rows that shade their external faces.
A gutter-beam spans the space between the blocks. In addition to the structural, functional and aesthetic aspects, it is a symbolic element because at its ends there are two equally main entrances and exits: one that leads from the urban environment to the interior of the house, and the other that connects it to the outside.
CONTEXT
São João da Boa Vista is a city of approximately 90,000 inhabitants in the interior of the São Paulo state. The land, a remnant of an old farm owned by the clients' family, has been broken up and incorporated by the city over the years. Although the green massif gives the impression that the house is located in a rural area, it is actually in a residential neighborhood very close to the city center. On the same plot of land, very close to the house, an old house has been preserved where the client's parents still live. Cohabiting the area, while preserving the privacy of the family units, was therefore the main premise of the project.
PERFORMANCE
The project was designed to be a weekend home, but after experiencing the space, the clients decided to move permanently to São João da Boa Vista. This decision means that the design of the layout and openings, which responded to the desire to preserve the dynamics of the families, was successful.
Thermal and acoustic comfort were also very successful. The slate slabs on the roof block the torrential orographic rains, characteristic of the region, from coming into direct contact with the metal tiles. As a result, the air cushion between the materials protects the internal space sonically, muffling the sound of the weather.
In the same way, the strategy of double walls helps to block outside noise. To prevent sound from leaking through the visual openings in the building mass, all the wooden frames received two juxtaposed laminated glasses, each 6mm.
With regard to the noise produced by the house itself, attention was paid to the sound privacy of the bedrooms. Two bathroom cores, shared by every two bedrooms, isolate the main bedrooms from the central bedrooms. At the boundary between all the bedrooms and the linear office that gives access to them, joinery cabinets were designed to act as sound barriers between the rooms.
Natural ventilation is provided by the large sliding glass panels (3.4m and 1.75m), which integrate the social area with the central courtyard, and also in all the openings with wooden brises-soleil instead of glass, providing continuous ventilation while the elements are open.
