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Panoramic diving

In one of Brazil’s seven biomes, home to the largest hydrographic basins in the country, studio Vazio S/A designed a three-bedroom house with breathtaking panoramic views on the Sierra.

Vazio S/A, Cerrado House, Moeda, Brazil, 2015

The Cerrado House was built at the foothills of the Sierra da Moeda, a mountain range in the state of Minas Gerais, in Brazil. The three-bedroom house designed by Vazio S/A has a rooftop pool and a wide staircase that leads to the rooftop terrace. The rooms are right under the swimming pool and have views of the sierra, the Cerrado and its twisted trees, while the screens on the northern and western faces protect against the inclement sun.

The Cerrado is one of Brazil seven biomes and covers an area of 1.5 million square km. It holds about a third of all Brazilian biodiversity, 5% of the world’s flora and fauna, and is home to the headwaters of the three largest hydrographic basins in the country (Amazon, São Francisco, and Paraná-Paraguay). It has a unique flora and stands out for its generously spaced trees and low-slung brushwood, blending into a South American variation on the African savannah and the European steppe.

The Cerrado House plays with function and form in a spontaneous and undogmatic way: the ramps and stairs of the swimming pool are stamped irrepressibly onto the facades and shape the internal space. The employment of the programmatic source is made directly manifest, generating a strategy that explores the programme and form relationship.

Seeking the plasticity of basic architectural elements, the project also exalts this underestimated and threatened biome, the Cerrado. There is no landscape design since the house sits on natural terrain, whose immensity and vistas can be appreciated from the pool terrace.