COURTYARD HOUSE
The property is located at 1250 m altitude in the Mantiqueira mountain range, in the municipality of Camanducaia, with a mountain climate.
The land, sloping towards the north face, favors the positioning of the house, which opens up to the views of the mountain range and closes to the cold wind from the south.
The resident, newly moved from São Paulo, has extensive experience in environmental education. The pleasure of teaching and hosting visitors combines into a larger life project. Living in the countryside seeks this reconnection with nature. For this, the guest rooms can be used by the family or by visitors who rent them, generating income that helps maintain the property. Activities such as organic farming, reforestation are geared towards guests and visitors who can perform activities and at the same time rest close to nature.
The project stems from the idea of a courtyard. A meeting place, be it in the daily agricultural activities (drying and sorting grains and vegetables), or during moments of rest, celebrations, or gazing at a bonfire under the starry sky.
The house program is organized into 3 blocks around a 10x10m courtyard: the main house, the shed/laundry, and the guest house with two units.
The positioning of the house at an intermediate level of the terrain allowed two “layers” of views. The closer preserved forest where animals are spotted and heard, and the valley with a mountain in the background where changes in the landscape can be perceived: rain, wind, and sun.
Throughout the day the temperature varies greatly, the days are hot and the nights are cold even in the summer. Except for the shed, the construction system adopted sought insulation and thermal inertia. For the main house and guests, the metal tile roof with insulation rests on glued laminated timber structures and 30cm rammed earth walls. For the shed, a space for tools and laundry, resource economy was chosen, using panel slabs and exposed concrete structure over conventional masonry walls and enclosures with ceramic brick cobogós from the region.
The sewage treatment system is ecological, through the use of an evapotranspiration basin with banana trees that evaporate the water purified by bacteria. The water collected from the rain infiltrates the soil again to feed the water table.
The entire project was designed to reduce the impact on the landscape, either by taking advantage of the soil from the earthwork to build the rammed earth walls or in the choice of wood from reforestation. The simplicity of the materials, left in their raw state, seeks this resource economy, as well as allowing a reconnection with the material that makes up the space.
