Houzz Tour: Splashy, Sustainable Shack in São Paulo

An abandoned home gets a second chance as a sustainable weekend dwelling for a Brazilian couple in the design industry

Houzz April 25, 2012

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Before interior designer Fábio Galeazzo came into the picture, this urban shack was a run-down home built in the 1930s that had poor ventilation and low ceilings. According to Galeazzo, there were many sleepless nights of wondering how to breathe new life into the shack without destroying the home's existing structure. "My clients are in the design industry, and they live in São Paulo — the fifth largest metropolitan area in the world, so it's crowded and swelling with people," says Galeazzo. "I wanted to create a weekend retreat that separated them from the chaos that comes with living in an urban place without destroying the home." The result, completed in June 2011, is a converted urban shack with an open floor plan that incorporates the couple's love of nature without shying away from color.

Houzz at a Glance
Who lives here: A couple, both designers
Location: São Paulo, Brazil
Size: 914 square feet
That's interesting: The kitchen rotates on an axis to face the garden or the living room.

Marco Antunio

Although São Paulo enjoys temperate weather throughout the year, it still has to suffer through some humid, subtropical days. Overlapping shade sails cool what's stored underneath and extend the color patchwork on the interior and exterior brick walls into the sky.

Marco Antunio

Circles and curves abound in the living room, with the suspended nest chair's circular base, a round jute rug, the Chifruda chair's parabolic headrest and Galeazzo's original creation, an orbital bookshelf window.

Galeazzo says that developing a project that is so different from previous projects brings "a certain level of anxiety in the process of construction and design," but when the design and remodeling was completed, it was incredibly rewarding to see the house's new incarnation.

Lines blur between outdoors and indoors throughout the shack, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the living room; the orbital bookshelf window beckons light into the interior and visually brings the outside indoors.

Suspended chair: Nestrest, Dedon; orbital bookshelf: custom made, Fabio Galeazzo; Chifruda chair: limited edition, Sergio Rodrigues

Marco Antunio

This image shows a view of the spherical window from the outside along with the exterior stone cladding, which provides the shack with thermal insulation.

Marco Antunio

This close-up celebrates the structural beauty of the Chifruda chair by Sergio Rodrigues. Despite being in his 80s, the Brazilian modernist furniture designer is still young at heart, evident in the playful yet still entirely functional design of the chair.

Marco Antunio

"Most everyone who enters the place says they would like to spend some time here to unwind, and really, that’s what the whole point of the project was: to make people feel good in a place," says Galeazzo.

Marco Antunio

The orbital kitchen designed by Galeazzo’s team rotates on an axis so you can turn it facing the garden or living room for daily use. "The kitchen is capable of integrating into both [garden and living room] spaces," Galeazzo says. "They can choose if they want to prepare food outside on a sunny day or if they want to watch the news from the television in the living room, which they can see from the kitchen."

The orbital kitchen is an articulation of how the house designs resists physical and spatial barriers, which traditionally come in the form of walls and other dividers.

Marco Antunio

This picture celebrates Galeazzo's midcentury-modern decor choices. The Brunno Jahara credenza, metal Emeco Navy chairs and Crown Major Chandelier add a laid-back sensibility — and colorful geometry — to the urban shack.

The interior wood floors are FSC-certified timber planks, which means that they didn't contribute to any forest destruction or come from companies involved in human rights abuses.

Marco Antunio

"We call the exterior walls a kind of 'anticamouflage,' because visually the house is meant to stick out from nature, but the design and retrofit building technique of the house were meant to have complete and utmost respect for nature," says Galeazzo.

Autoclaved bamboo poles give the house the needed structure for more headroom.

Evelyn Muller

A glass half-partition (not visible in this picture) behind the wood column divides the wet room into two parts. The faucet tube is the chrome line hanging from the roof, which, from a distance, sometimes fades into the steel picture window frame.

Sink: Cuba Quadrada de Piso, Deca

Evelyn Muller

The exterior and interior wall colors echo the Brazilian modernist painter Tarsila do Amaral's work, and everywhere in the shack, there is visual stimulation in the form of color patchwork.