Campos House / Pace Arquitetura

We conceived the house respecting its environment and using an aesthetic that integrates into the surroundings with bare concrete, stone, wood, and glass as the primary materials. While the design’s strong personality is imposing, it also integrates itself. The aesthetic weight of the brutalist concrete seems light with the cantilevered. The large surface without openings introduces emptiness that gives movement and visual fluidity to the apparent “closed box”. Upon arriving, we come across three closed concrete volumes that suggest a bunker or a vault. However, as soon as we open the main entrance we find ourselves in an open space facing an exuberant view as if atop an observatory. This sensation repeats itself in any of the internal spaces that nestle and comfort while also being open to the outside. 

Black is predominant in the decoration and was chosen for the figurative absence that it suggests, leaving space that can be filled by the sensations and interpretations one has upon gazing at it. The toughness and strength of the shapes transform into weightlessness, the first impression of entering the “bunker” transforms into the experience of an open space among nature, and the coldness generally attributed to concrete, stone, glass, and dark colors transforms into coziness that envelops and welcomes. These contradictions and dualities of sensations are created by the shapes and materials used to integrate into the human spirit and fills each space with vitality.