Refúgio House

"Refuge House" was the name we gave to this peculiar house, so tall and isolated that it seems closer to the sky and the birds than to the ground and its cars, a very unique condition in a metropolis like São Paulo.

At the top of a sloping plot, with a difference in elevation of more than 16 meters, we found a ruined single-story house, built in the 1950s. The climb of more than 13 meters in height to reach the house's implantation level is via a long, winding staircase ascending between a series of retaining walls.

We requested a civil engineer to assess the condition of these retaining walls. The technical evaluation found that these elements were stable, but we should consider some guidelines for the project: not to overload the retaining walls or the walls of the existing house, not to demolish or alter the retaining walls, and to avoid new foundations that could destabilize existing walls and structures.

The proposal for the renovation project was then born from an understanding of the conditions and restrictions of the land, as well as an understanding of its potential and poetic qualities. Since the existing house's roof, made of ceramic tiles and a wooden structure, was completely rotten and needed to be entirely replaced, we decided to rebuild the roof slightly higher than the existing one, in order to create a central mezzanine within the roof structure. This new roof was designed with a lightweight wooden structure supported by the existing walls without overloading them.

The mezzanine was designed at a level that allowed the integration of this new floor of the house with the highest plateau of the land. We chose to place the social area of ​​the house (integrated living room and kitchen) in this new area, since this space opens on one side to one of the most beautiful and privileged views of the city and on the other to a more intimate patio and garden.

Team: Fernanda Neiva, Fernanda Palmieri, Gil Mello (authors) Karina Almeida, Liliane Nambu (team)

Photos: Marcos Vilas Boas