
Oh, what a complex task is to renovate a home! It is so difficult to decide what is good enough to keep and what needs to go.
Sometimes, the only solution is to demolish everything.
You know, like Estúdio BRA did in an old house in Pinheiros district of São Paulo, and managed to transform it from a dark house into a very bright and functional home even though it is built on a narrow plot, measuring 4x24m.
The house, now belonging to a third generation of the same family – a young couple and their dog, was overly compartmentalised space with low light and low ceilings and like that didn’t meet the expectations of the new owners. It needed to be adapted to their contemporary and sustainable lifestyle.
The architects decided to demolish everything and keep only the structural brick walls. They divided the house into three levels: ground floor, 1st floor and terrace with garden on the rooftop.
The ground floor is an open space, designed to perfectly fit the long but narrow plot. It consists of kitchen, living room and a staircase.
In front of the house, a small garden with native plant species was designed, to create a perfect and private welcome to a new home. The entrance to a ground floor is through a pivoting door and a sliding frame that leads to a kitchen, the other end of the ground floor also ends with a big glass sliding door – this allows the extension of the social areas into the outdoor space. And as you probably already know, an outdoor space should be an extension of the interior.
The upper part of the house with a simple concrete facade is slightly cantilevered over the ground level making it seem like it’s hovering over the ground floor.
At the edge of the garden is a barbecue area and a powder room. To match the area with the indoor kitchen, architects used the same wooden cabinets, and floor tiles – but this time as a backsplash for barbecue area. The slab above these areas is the green roof in which the smaller fruit trees are growing.
The rooftop is divided into several zones: a wooden deck in a central area, small lawn oriented to the street side of the plot and a vegetable garden oriented to the main garden of the house.
There is also a small technical volume with the laundry, this way architects didn’t take away valuable space in the rest of the house. The important part is that the installations are hidden under the wooden deck. This enabled a lawn and vegetable garden to be on the same level as the wooden deck.

This house is the perfect example of everything we love in architecture and interior design – how to mix and match materials and colours and overall use of space and make it beautiful and functional at the same time.
Studio: Estúdio BRA Arquitetura
Lead architects: André Di Gregorio, Rodrigo Maçonilio
Team: Beatriz Rocha, Lorran Siqueira, Júlia Bruckmann, Alanna Scarcelli
Location: Pinheiros, São Paulo, SP – Brazil
Year: 2017
Area 110 m²
Photographer: © Maíra Acayaba
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