Gallery Post // Casa Maracanã by Terra e Tuma Arquitetos Associados.

Architects: Terra and Tuma Arquitetos Associados.
Location: São Paulo, Brazil.
Year Completed: 2009.
Photographs: Pedro Kok.

Maracanã House is made of blocks of light concrete, hosting the family of Danilo Terra, one of the studio directors at Terra and Tuma Arquitetos Associados. The ceramic mural used on the facade was created by the Brazilian artist Alexandre Mancini. The house can be accessed through the void. Surprisingly empty, a belvedere opens to the residence, and a guide for the functional areas; social and services downstairs, and more intimate, upstairs. The light passes through the massive glass openings that oppose the strength of the concrete materiality that builds the house, just as it invades the city streets, in all directions.

The plans that define its geometry – opaque in its dull grey materiality, transparent in its glass surfaces, vibrant in the access wall – mark the presence of a new event in the bucolic neighbourhood, where people wonder about the curious presence of this new building. It’s jarring geometry, compared to other traditional houses in the neighbourhood, becomes a surprising element; it hides any territorial definition, and, just like a public event, appropriates itself from the street from where it’s perceived. By fully occupying the property that was available, the house shares its boundaries with the exterior space, creating the sense of a continuous space that includes both the exterior and the interior.

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[Images courtesy of Terra e Tuma Arquitetos Associados. Photography by Pedro Kok.]