Project: RT Residence
Architects: Jacobsen Arquitetura
Location: Laranjeiras, Brazil
Area: 5,059 sf
Photographs by: Pedro Kok
RT Residence by Jacobsen Arquitetura
The RT Residence is a luxurious contemporary home designed by a studio whose work we’ve featured quite often by now – Jacobsen Arquitetura from Brazil. Some of their other projects include the spectacular MLA House in Sao Paulo and the RSC Residence in Porto Feliz. In a similar fashion, they’ve designed the RT residence with just over 5,000 square feet of living spaces divided up on two stories and surrounded by lush landscapes.
The conceptual goal of this project was to develop a two-story house that visually appeared to be a one-story structure. For this, we raised the main ground level of the house by 1.5 meter, creating a lower, half buried floor, but still receiving natural lighting and ventilation. We located all the service and leisure areas, such as a home theater, exercise room and sauna, on this floor. The level for the social and private areas was distributed in two similar rectangular volumes. These volumes were laid out in a parallel, although shifted, manner. The blocks were linked by a covering that also formed the overhang, generating a circulation space that, while closed, appears to be external. The living room comes to touch the ground level and, therefore, has a higher ceiling. Next to the street, the construction detaches from the ground, since there is no lower floor at this point.
Despite the mandatory use of a sloping roof and ceramic roofing tiles, the house’s covering appears to be flat, since from the outside all that can be seen is the wooden overhang and glass. The very slight slope we created is only visible from the inside. The format of the triangular pool was determined by the limits of the construction itself.
Structurally, we used reinforced concrete for the foundations and the half-buried floor, columns and metallic beams for the main floor and a wooden structure for the roof. The main finishing materials are charred wood and Travertine marble.
