The plot was flat, slightly below the level of the two adjoining streets — one to the west and the other to the north. There were no trees. The first step was to build an opaque fence as tall as possible, around two metres high, and position the house off-centre towards the east, filling all the buildable boundaries except the west — the only side that gets sunlight throughout the year. This is where the perimeter garden becomes widest (7.6m). The rest of the garden has variable widths to comply with regulations (3m from neighbours and between 5m and 6m from the streets) — regulations often demand things that don’t always make much sense. To the north, we planted evergreen trees that, over time, will block the view from the neighbouring residential tower.
The new house is structured in four concentric layers, parallel to the boundaries of the plot, like an onion. From the outside in, these are: the boundary wall, the perimeter patio, a continuous gallery surrounding the central core, and a two-storey exposed concrete block structure.
In the early phases of the project, when the house was larger, the perimeter gallery served as an intermediate, bioclimatised space for complementary uses, with all the main rooms housed within the core. Later, due to budget adjustments, the central core was reduced to include only the bedrooms, bathrooms and staircase. The common areas were relocated to the gallery.
Almost everything happens in the gallery. It functions as a veranda, with certain echoes of Charles Moore’s Orinda House, offering intense and seasonally variable interactions with the patio. In summer, large sliding closures transform it into a porch. In winter, large corner windows frame views of the garden and capture solar radiation from the west. In this house, the glass panes are fixed, while the movable closures are opaque — a condition that constantly transforms the façade and gallery, depending on what is open or closed.
As in Lina Bo Bardi’s Santa Maria dos Anjos Chapel, the veranda, with its pitched roof, is built using lightweight, dry construction systems: a wooden structure (columns, beams and roof) and external joinery of glass, aluminium, wood and corrugated sheet metal. The pitched roof channels rainwater directly into the patio without any collection system. In contrast to the lightness of the gallery, the central core is massive and compact, offering greater thermal inertia. The block walls and floor slabs are left exposed in the gallery and painted white in the rooms.
In winter, the veranda shelters and heats the entire central core (bathrooms and bedrooms), which has no dedicated climate-control system on the ground floor. The concrete flooring, with high thermal inertia, absorbs direct solar radiation and is heated by underfloor heating, as are the first-floor bedrooms. The heating is provided by an aerothermal heat pump.
In summer, when the sliding panels are closed, the windows are shaded by the overhanging pitched roof and reflective exterior curtains. Inside, the sloped ceiling supports passive ventilation through stratification, expelling hot air via four concealed ducts in the façades that function as small solar chimneys. This promotes natural air renewal and helps to cool the veranda.
