2 Houses on the Lake – on the hills of Rio de Janeiro / 2017 The property has 30 hectares, or 300 thousand sqm and a beautiful lake surrounded by dense and diverse forest. This land is 1,137m high and 125km from Rio de Janeiro. It was on its shores that we gently landed the two houses. The entire volume is supported only on 8 points due to the fragile nature of the terrain.

One house is for permanent residence of its owner and the other for eventual use of his son. They are therefore 2 independent houses, connected by a common external covered area, with stove and wood oven, barbecue, “mesón” and lounge with fireplace and a covered gallery all on the same level. On the lower floor there is only one music and projection room, storage room, locker room and gym with sauna.

The remainder area below the houses is the natural terrain, which gently slopes down toward the lake. For cost reasons, it was not possible to use only a metallic structure, resulting in a mixed solution, metallic / concrete. On the façade facing north there are 3 “solar heating walls” for the bedrooms, mitigating the most critical situation from the point of view of energy demand during the cold winter of the region.