The busy day-to-day life in the big urban centers drives families to seek a haven for tranquility on the weekends. Luckily, the land chosen within a farm, in the interior of São Paulo, concentrated a series of positive aspects for the design of the project: views, large land, a good solar orientation, generous setbacks, high soil permeability, absence of currency walls. However, a requirement in the condominium regulation related to the houses’ roof, caught the residents by surprise.

The references of the couple who had just returned from vacation in a winery with contemporary architecture and influenced by one of our recently published projects, referred to a house with volumetry that hid the roofs, but the condominium regulation did not allow the use of flat slabs, or inlaid roof. It would be our first house with apparent roofs.

The required needs program and the land size had exactly the proportion of what we believed to be ideal for a one-store house with plenty of open space for outdoor living.

Casa Haras came up as a pavilion installation consisting of 3 volumes: two parallels, with NE-SW orientation and a third perpendicular connecting with NW-SE orientation, as an "H". The idea was based on the desire to have the central leisure area in the other spaces of the house, and with the proposed implantation, we were able to create two outdoor living areas: a main one with a deck and a swimming pool and a secondary area with a spa, a water mirror and a bonfire separated by the perpendicular volume and visually connected by the transparency of the sliding glass doors.

The pavilion of the main facade receives basically the distribution of the service area and the garage, and is also where the social access of the house happens. A glass door on the main facade reveals the entrance hall where a stone wall in the background can be seen, as well as the wooden panels on the sides, which conceal a cellar and a cloakroom for visitors.

The central pavilion, glazed on both sides, concentrates a huge social area with dining room and a large living room with fireplace, providing a feeling of full insertion to the leisure area of the house.

Lastly, the third pavilion concentrates the most intimate wing with 4 suites and a tv room. The external balcony, common to all rooms, allows a more direct circulation to the rooms of the house, since it eliminates the need to transit through the internal corridor, which makes the circulation more dynamic and the house more integrated to the leisure.

The flat distribution of the house gives to all the environments a sense of continuity beyond the constructed limit, since all have direct visual relation through glazed sliding doors with more than 1150m2 of free land. The high level of permeability of the soil, in the order of 60%, guaranteed a generous area for the landscaping design that embraces the house by the front, side and back indents, and advance through the deconstructed central core.

The simple volumetry and lightness of the gable roof in all 3 blocks of the house was strengthened by the decision to bury the volume of the water tank underneath the pool deck. This intention ended up contributing significantly to the harmony of the architectural complex and to the desired aspect of the country house, which was further reinforced by the use of natural materials such as the stone wall and the use of the wood in the panels, the doors frames, wood-lined ceilings and the facade.