Architects: Jacobsen Arquitetura
Project: AMB Balcony house
Architect in Charge: Paulo Jacobsen
Design Team: Fabiana Porto (coordinator), Edgar Murata, Henrique Carvalho, Marina Nogaró
Location: Guarujá, Brazil
Area 810.0 sqm
Photography: Leonardo Finotti
The AMB Balcony House is situated on the coast of São Paulo, Guaruja City in the middle of the Atlantic Forest. From the street you can only see one of the three floors of the house because the terrain has accentuated slopes that give different views of an almost untouched natural landscape.
The most common situation, where the rooms are upstairs and social rooms are downstairs, was reversed on the design of this residence. On the entrance of the house we have a hall that serves as a mezzanine overlooking the double ceiling living room with proximally 6,00m height and wood frame glass windows with a view looking at the swimming pool and the forest. In the lateral of the hall, the balcony outside is surrounded by large wooden bench, serving as a protection.
In the intermediate floor are the social areas: the living room and dining room, which join the outdoor kitchen, outdoor deck and infinity swimming pool.Downstairs is the intimate area with five suites. It is this strategy of reversing the usual array of social and intimate area that makes the rooms, even overlooking the sea, have the privacy afforded by the trees that are at that level.
The house can be called the balcony house with large glass panels that allow visual contact with the surrounding areas of the residence and the natural landscape of the region. The windows of the rooms have wooden Cumarú shutters .This wood is also present on the deck of the balconies and floors of rooms. In the living room two bamboo plants sprout from the middle of the floor, bringing the forest into the house.
This is how the house shows its relationship with the local landscape, barely visible through the dense forest in the access road, but grows and can be seen on the other side along with the look of a coast line and a stunning tropical forest.
