Implanted forest house
Designed for a young couple, Fortunata House is located in the extreme south of Brazil, and is a project that highlights responsive architecture: the careful reading of the environmental conditions; the precise determination of the construction processes; the correct resolution of the program of demands; and the harmony of the built forms.
Built in a traditional, open neighbourhood, the house was implanted around a huge Araucaria Angustifolia tree. The access from the sidewalk to the entrance of the house is through a winding path of soil and gravel, the street enters the courtyard and extends to the entrance door. There are no walls, only a diaphanous metallic screen. There is the intention that the floor of the house is the same as the floor of the city; the desire to create urban spaces without barriers, to visually integrate the public and the private.
Exposed concrete molded-in loco is used as the total material, in the structure, the closings, the stair steps, and even in the fixed furniture. A material that ages with the same beauty as nature, resists well to bad weather, and requires little maintenance, even in the humidity of the forest. Besides, it is a very common system in the region, with plenty of skilled labor and construction costs lower than other systems with the same virtues. A structure that shows itself raw and reveals a construction process that, at the same time is rigorous and precise, also shows the perfect imperfections of handmade work. A work where matter and technique are indivisible.
Luciano Lerner Basso designed a silent architecture that maintains a clear dialogue with nature, either through its opaque walls that in the harsh southern winter blends in with the fog, or by the way the forest is reflected in its glass on blue sky days. Its plastic quality lies in the relationships between planes, voids, lights, landscape, and textures. A project that expands the field of architecture itself and brings reflections on the relationships between house and city, between man and nature.
