A symphony of volumes and voids echo while gossamers dance in light at the Pacaembu House in São Paulo, Brazil. Built for a young couple and conceived by local architecture firm Studio Arthur Casas, the residential architecture is spread across different levels on the site – a reason that renders the property a discreet look despite its massive area. The house is configured to accommodate meeting and leisure spaces for the clients’ social engagements; what stands out is a concrete edifice expressing an endearing warmth and a curious pull. Sheathed in a glass façade with large wooden overhangs, the social pockets take up space on the ground floor—the area overlooking a verandah and a swimming pool. On the lower level, a garden and a gourmet area create an idyllic escape. The family’s private quarters are on the first floor.

The house is located in a residential neighbourhood, surrounding dense greenery. The building’s staggered nature is the result of its position on site – a plot of land slotted between two streets and divided by a seven-metre slope. The design team made the most use of this topographic feature to design the necessary pockets of social and private areas. While the levels are negotiated by elevators and stairs, the intervention helped the architecture capture distinguished views of the surroundings as well as the discretion of the house when seen from the street.

The social heart of the house takes up space on the ground floor. An open-plan layout accommodates a gracious setup of seating space for social gatherings. Floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors bring the outdoor – views of the open court with a pool and outdoor seating. Imposing wooden overhangs jutting out from a deep cantilevered volume asserts an unyielding presence of the architecture on site. At night, the place sports an enchanting luminosity, supported by glazed rectangular recesses in the floor whose illuminated planes ‘announce through transparency what happens underground’. Dappled light filtering through the trees in and around the site – evoking the feeling of a native forest as per Studio Arthur Casas – adds a natural playfulness to the outdoors. Stairs going down and above connect to the family’s personal social den and private quarters respectively. Going down the floor, a tunnel-like passage opens into the main area where there is a kitchen, dining, lounge, and an indoor garden. Cyclopean concrete walls moulded in loco with stones flank the passage whereas large recesses in the wooden ceiling let natural light in. An endearing warmth permeates this space, illustrated by oversized terracotta vessels that are kept on an elevated platform along the wall.

A distinguished design feature of the house is how it took advantage of natural light and facilitated a poetic interaction with the built elements. This includes sunlight slicing through the stairs and creating shifting reflections on the concrete walls and a huge-angled cutout on the intersection of roof planes of the double-height entrance that renders a scenographic effect due to the penetration of the sun's rays.

The overarching warmth in the interior design is conveyed by a neutral palette with variable brown tones. Wood and concrete complement each other, the materials, patterns, and tactility culminate into a beachy-looking home. The sandy aesthetics also come across as quite impressive in its balance of the polished and the rugged. The cyclopean concrete on façade and the internal coatings go well with matte leather upholstery, wooden doors and walls, and pops of orange and green marble details. Per the design team, the concrete moulding with stones had its own challenges in defining the ideal pigmentation and the placement of stone pieces. The process ensued testing several prototypes before reaching the desired outcome. The stone allocation into the concrete, placed one by one, felt like pasting rubber stamps on cement for the team.

A curated selection of vintage and bespoke furniture features in the house. The former includes a pair of Tonico armchairs by Sergio Rodrigues, while the latter has Fusca sofas, a Copacabana sideboard, the Ettore side table, and the Grampo lamps. Pacaembu House balances grandeur and a multiplicity of functions with utmost ease, creating a home where people turn to for warm coffee and a warmer hug.