On my last weekend in Brazil, before returning to the Netherlands, I was very fortunate to be hosted by the familiy of Flávio and Rosana Acayaba at their weekend house in Guarujá, a city on the coast about one driving hour (depending on traffic) away from the city of São Paolo. I also had the chance to see the famous wooden beach house of Flávios Brother Marcos Acayaba. Marcos is a renowned practicing architect and Professor at the FAU-USP, his wife Marlene an influential art and architecture historian.
The house is located about twenty driving minutes north of the city in a gated community called Tijucopava. Aside from the context of the semi-privatised public territory which is a urban phenomenon to be discussed separately, the architecture of this house uniquely interacts with the lush atlantic forest. The elaborateness of the wooden construction manages to bundle the entire load of the house to the minimal amount of beddings needed for stability. The vertical force coming form the hexagonal wooden structure is dramatically condensed on to eighteen tilted girders that merge on three steel round profiles bearing on concrete foundations. The minimal impact on the soil and the widening towards the top attest not only for a mastery of the material wood - Brazil by the way does not have a carpentry tradition - but also for an intense examination of the context. Other houses in this hilly atlantic forest are mostly made of blocks and concrete, displaying the usual cacophony of neogreek capitels and mexican tile roofs on a terraced lawn. They seem fatuitous compared to the described sensible assimilation.
Two lectures of his house were of particular interest to Marcos: One by an american journalist who felt "like walking in the trees" and an other lecture by a family not particularly familiar with architecture and art in general who saw in the large living room "a space like a circus". The hexagonal structure fixes three directions, but they are dissolved by large glass windows and bay balconies indeed giving the impression of an almost circular space. What I find equally interesting as these two lectures is that the house somehow subverts the contradiction present in european architectural thinking resulting from an understanding of Gottfried Sempers four Elements. Consisting purely of framework and enclosing membrane it finds a to me unprecedented synthesis between the two. The house manages to generate an elegance and cozyness found in buildings true to the principle of cladding of Adolf Loos. But besides this representational value it is even more ontological and radical than the the buildigs of contemporary Swiss Architects such as Christian Kerez. Kerez's radicality is of course compromised by tightened climatic and legal requirements. But his architecture creates the opposite of the ease I found in the Acayaba house. It proves that a demonstration of ontological principles can substitute a highly contextual, representational yet comfortable and simultaneously elegant architecture.
Apparently, there will be some of Acayabas work displayed in the next issue of ARCH+.
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