Vertical House by Isay Weinfeld

Architects: Isay Weinfeld
Location: São Paulo, Brazil
Year: 2006
Area: 3,767 sqft
Photo courtesy: Leonardo Finotti
Description:

This house was intended for a youthful single man on a tight urban site covering just 180 square meters. Having a full program to consider – other than the typical rooms, the customer longed for a visitor room, an exercise center, a swimming pool and guardian’s quarters – , we chose to construct the house vertically and to advance the rooms upwards on split-levels: a storm cellar, four over the ground floors and a housetop patio.

Down in the cellar are a little rec center and sauna. On ground floor, set between a passage court where a set pattern in the rooftop acquires common light and lets a Yellow Ipê tree to ascend through and develop, and a little walled-in patio nursery and swimming pool in the back of the plot, an elevated, twofold tallness lounge room is the center space in the house.

On mezzanine level, lounge area and kitchen ignore the parlor underneath, while a little patio in the open watches out onto the road. One level up is the expert suite with an east-bound overhang; another level above is a visitor room with a west-bound gallery. At last, on the highest level, a housetop porch crowns the thickly stuffed structure.