Santa Teresa’s House / Carla Juaçaba

Architects: Carla Juaçaba
Location: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Team: Carlos Zebulun
Area: 140.0 m2
Project Year: 2017
Photograph: Federico Cairoli, Clovis Cunha

Engineering: Geraldo Filizola

Text description provided by the architects. The Santa Teresa’s house was designed on a sloping ground. For economic reasons we prefer to put the house in a single small plateau at 5m from the street. Santa Teresa is in a central area of Rio de Janeiro with a dense green area. The house follows the level curve, with a level difference between the two parts of the house, the social and the intimate one.

A glass gallery connects all parts of the house, the living room, the kitchen, and the bedrooms, forming an intimate living room throughout the bedrooms. The whole environment of the house has a panoramic view of the forest, and the Baía de Guanabara.

The roof is the most important element of the house, a single ridge divides on one side the gallery with the glass ceiling, to the other gable roof with different slopes, the lower intimate side and the living room with a higher ceiling. The house is covered by metal sandwich roofing with wood paneling lining. The principle was to design a low-cost house, using a thin metal structure, which repeats every 2m supported on a sill plate slab.

The house is not seen from the street, and the gallery with the translucent glass lets only see the silhouette of who passes. At night the artificial light changes the perception of the house, and turns it into a lamp. Fine horizontal wooden windows accompany the gallery and open and close to circulate the air. The house is closed for entrance, and open to landscape.