Designed for architect and studio director Danilo Terra and his family, the three-storey Maracanã House was constructed on a tiered site in the city suburbs, where the lowest level of the ground is a storey below the street.

Terra e Tuma constructed the house using concrete and left chunky block walls exposed around both interior and exterior spaces.

The ceramic mural hovers just in front of the entrance and is a piece that artist Alexandre Mancini created especially for the house.

The tiles display a maze of angular lines and shapes, interspersed with the occasional red dot. "I worked with a particular shape, a red dot," explained Mancini. "I believe it points to and emphasises the rhythm of the composition."

Once inside, this entrance is revealed to be on a mezzanine middle floor, where concrete staircases lead up to first floor bedooms or down into the open-plan living and dining room.

Large glass doors open the living room out to the courtyard garden beyond, while a second sunken courtyard is positioned at the front of the house beside a tall window stretching all the way up to the roof.

Other recently completed houses in São Paulo include one clothed in golden aluminium and one with concrete upper storeys perched above a living room without walls. See more architecture in Brazil.

Photography is by Pedro Kok.

Here's a project description written by architect Daniel Corsi, translated into English by Monika Sönksen:

São Paulo. In this city, which contemporaneity is able to perform the most extraordinary urban contrasts for us, living can reveal an encouraging condition.

In search of a place where this could be experienced, the idea of an elementary residence acquires the character of a happening. Thus, as this house decided to silently place itself at the westerly metropolitan meanders, is how it is presented at Maracanã Street.

The plans which define the geometry – opaque in grayish materiality, clear in glass surfaces or vibrant on the access mural – shows its presence like a new event around the bucolic surroundings, where curious people wonder this new construction. Its discordant geometry in relation to the traditional houses of the neighborhood surprises upon the moment when it conceals any territorial definition, admitting as an element and as a public event, takes possession of the street which allows to be perceived. Through its whole property's occupation as it is available, it shares its limits as if internalizes the surrounding and though arises its unique place.

More than a space, its levels gradually form a path through which outside and inside merge in a proper and continuous shape. The house discovers new possibilities to the limitations of the scanty plot, whose complexity exceeds horizontal and vertical routes which invariably leads to a new spacial experience, capable to elucidate singularities of the district's geography.

Being in the house of Maracanã Street is being in Lapa; is to live together with its peculiarities, stamped in the expectation to discover until where its spaces can conduct us and the possibility it offers the contemplation of neighbours reddish roof constructions and the church facade which crowns the district, while the sunset at São Paulo's horizon gets unveiled.

Entering the house doesn't mean to set apart the city, which leads us to it or to close off a disconnected universe. Its access has to be discovered from behind the ceramics mural painted in black, white and red compositions. Entering the house means, simply to transpose a succession of spaces, now narrow, now lightened, now shady, which leads us always to new experiences.

Above: lower floor plan - click above for larger image

The house's arrival happens from the emptiness, which is a viewpoint to the living space and also an identification area of its functional sections: social and services below, intimate above. Like the city streets, the lights between their spaces enlightens every directions, through big glass openings which sets against the solidity of the concrete materiality which it is built.

Above: middle floor plan - click above for larger image

Which way some arrives, which way some passes, which way some goes? Through the space, through the emptiness. Going around or staying, that's how its extension is discovered. We can find ourselves immersed in its lower pavement, defined by concrete plans, by the gardens and by the backyard which shape the ambiance, or we can go through vertically until the gliding plan of the roof unveils the sky in a special instant leaving us as observers of the city whose point of view is this house's roof top.

Above: upper floor plan - click above for larger image

The house is a living infrastructure. The pavements which configures a succession of perspectives is subtle protected by the presence of big glass frames. The handling of the technique and the use of minimum materials, as if it where stones over stones in its essence, confirm that Architecture can undress the present temporary superficialities and elevate only the spacial essence.

Above: roof plan - click above for larger image

The shelter, the protection to the fundamental, comprehend the nature into what the house is destinated and the sense it assumes, for those who are witnesses. Nothing more is needed for the contemporaneus city living. Here is the fundamental residence, unique and revealed.

Above: long section from courtyard to street - click above for larger image

Above: cross section through living room

Above: cross section through mezzanine

Above: cross section through staircase

Above: front elevation

Above: side elevation

Above: rear elevation

Above: side elevation

The post Maracanã House
by Terra e Tuma appeared first on Dezeen.

See a series of movies by Pedro Kok on Dezeen, including one about Niemeyer's Marquise do Parque do Ibirapuera pathway, or see more photography by Kok on his website.

See more projects by Oscar Niemeyer on Dezeen »

The post Key projects by Oscar Niemeyer in Brazil
photographed by Pedro Kok appeared first on Dezeen.

DezeenTV: here's another video shot by Brazilian photographer Pedro Kok, this time the Marquise do Parque do Ibirapuera in São Paulo, Brazil, designed by Oscar Niemeyer in 1952.

Click on the symbol in the bottom right of the video player above to view the movie in full-screen HD.
Can’t see the movie? Click here.

See Pedro's video of the Rolex learning Centre by SANAA, published yesterday.

Watch all our movies »

Here's a little information from Kok:

This video is part of the exhibition Arquitetura Brasileira – Viver na Floresta (Brazilian Architecture – Living in the Forest), at the Instituto Tomie Ohtake in São Paulo, Brazil until August 1st 2010. More details (in portuguese only).

See also:

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Pedro Kok Movie: VitraHaus	Pedro Kok Movie: Galeria Adriana Varejão	Pedro Kok Movie: Rolex Learning Centre

The post Movie by Pedro Kok: Marquise do Parque do
Ibirapuera by Oscar Niemeyer appeared first on Dezeen.

DezeenTV: Brazilian architectural photographer Pedro Kok has made this black-and-white movie of the Rolex Learning Centre in Switzerland, designed by Japanese architects SANAA.

Click on the symbol in the bottom right of the video player above to view the movie in full-screen HD.
Can’t see the movie? Click here.

More information about the project in our earlier story.
See all our stories about SANAA in our special category.

Watch all our movies »

See also:

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Pedro Kok Movie: VitraHaus	Pedro Kok Movie: Galeria Adriana Varejão	Pedro Kok Movie: Casa Modernista

The post Movie by Pedro Kok: Rolex Learning Centre
by SANAA appeared first on Dezeen.

Next in our series of movies by Brazilian photographer Pedro Kok is this 1928 Modernist house in São Paulo by Gregori Warchavchik.

Click on the symbol in the bottom right of the video player above to view the movie in full-screen HD.
Can’t see the movie? Click here.

More movies by Pedro Kok on Dezeen:

VitraHaus by Herzog & de Meuron
Galeria Adriana Varejão by Rodrigo Cerviño Lopez

Here's a little more information from Kok:

The Modernist House at Santa Cruz St., São Paulo, Brazil, designed by architect Gregori Warchavchik and built in 1928, is considered the first modernist building in Brazil. Defined as a state heritage site in 1984, it is undergoing restoration and conservation work and was reopened to public in 2008. Today receives the Museum of the City of São Paulo.

Watch all our movies »

The post Movie by Pedro Kok: Casa Modernista da
Rua Santa Cruz by Gregori Warchavchik appeared first on Dezeen.