Casa Tropical design by Camarim Architects, and used for tropical holiday house in Mundaú Northeast Brazil. The design concept springs from the need of clients to live in closer contact with nature. Thus Camarim Architects have left behind the traditional compact volume with internal circulation to design an open wood-skinned gallery that surrounds the 3 floors of the house and distributes the various rooms. The outcome is a condensed and sensual experience of sun, shadow, wind and coconut trees. There are 3 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms and 2 kitchens in the house. Almost everything could be accessed through the gallery. The open roof is the place where merging coconut trees, dunes and sea could be viewed all together. Read the description of Casa Tropical from the architects after the images or see the architects website here.
Description From The Architects.
“…..Landscape design consisted of elemental interventions that transformed an agricultural land in a tropical garden. We selected trees and cleaned the ground, leaving the sand on the surface. The parallel irrigation canals, which divided the land, were redesigned as long diagonals across the garden. We modelled the site and laid granite stones from the house to special areas in the garden: a table under a passion fruit pergola, a street access under the generous shadow of an old cashew tree, a lush green hideaway. For the wall, we produced precast perforated concrete panels that draw textures of light and shadow from the nearby foliage, and allow for a diaphanous, circumscribed glance of the garden. The wind that passes through the wall shakes the water and the leaves, generating a cool microclimate during the dry season.
Passive cooling is achieved by means of the gallery: it shelters the interior spaces from the tropical sun, leaving them permeable to the mountain breeze. The wooden skin that wraps the gallery filters glare, protects intimacy in the bedrooms and frames sights. Drinkable water is obtained from the roof, the deep stream or transported by truck; it is then filtered, stored and pressurized to the tap. Energy is generated from sun and wind, intense in the region, or bought from the public network. Hydraulic, electrical, gas and telecom services run in 2 vertical cores accessible from the 5 bathrooms and 2 kitchens for maintenance. In the absence of a public sewage system, we designed a sceptic tank with a super efficient anaerobic filter that cleans up to 90% of the effluent. The energy and service strategy of this house is unprecedented in the region.”
