Ownerless House nº 01 in Avaré, Brazil by Vao Arquitetura

This is not the first time we’re featuring the work of Brazilian architecture studio Vão, and something tells us it won’t be the last. Vão’s Ownerless House nº 01 is the first of three adjoining plots bought by their client who intends on building a series of investment houses in Avaré, a city in the interior of São Paulo.

Single-family housing projects usually respond to desires and objectives of specific clients but in this case, the client was only a middle-man for the unknown future residents. Vão’s approach was to deliver a series of spaces flexible enough to accommodate the most diverse of family dynamics.

“The entire project was designed not as an object but as a route back to the interior,” said the design team. “Alternating open and closed spaces where natural light and reflections change according to the time and the season.” Viewed externally, the house presents itself as a sculpted recess into the built mass, where the leaning red wall directs the perspective to the beginning of the journey.

The absence of mandatory setbacks in an urban lot of standard dimensions allowed the project to occupy the site’s entire 10m width. Instead of a loose object with narrow plant and small lateral recesses, the single-storey house had better spatial proportions and more concentrated external areas.

The existing 600mm ground slope was used to divide the plan into two levels: the first one includes the social and service areas, accessed directly from the entrance, while the second contains the private areas, such as the bedrooms and bathrooms, accessed by the stair.

The living, dining and kitchen areas are spread out over a courtyard located in the centre of the plan. Surrounded by large panels of clear glass, the courtyard’s physical limit is diluted by becoming visually integrated within the interior. Both the patio and its extension, a set-down floor finished in bold tiles, are covered with a continuous pergola. The pergola elements were individually prefabricated and later assembled on site, in order to expedite the process and save on the materials. This technique was adopted from studying the work of the Brazilian architect Rino Levi, who extensively used prefabricated concrete elements in order to capitalise on the light in residential projects.

The transition between public and private space takes place through a garden illuminated by triangles of natural light, culminating in a concrete bench located next to the sidewalk. This simple gesture invites the practice common in the area: to sit and to observe the street.