Berkut Baroneza House is a 693 m2 residence in Bragança Paulista, São Paulo, organized as a low concrete frame across a sloping site. Designed by Yuri Vital, the house combines long structural spans, an inward-facing water court, and carefully screened perimeter spaces to negotiate exposure to the valley with domestic privacy.
Berkut Baroneza House Technical Information
- ArchitectsYuri Vital
- LocationBragança Paulista, São Paulo, Brazil
- Gross Area693 m2 | 7,459 Sq. Ft.
- Project Year2021
- Photographs© Daniel Santo and Manuel Sá
The architectural proposal finds its central argument in the honest expression of the structure.
– Yuri Vital
A Horizontal House on a Sloping Site
Set on a hillside in Bragança Paulista, Berkut Baroneza House is conceived as a horizontal concrete body placed across, rather than stepped down, the natural slope. From the valley, its outer face reads as a long, largely blind bar, its weight interrupted by a limited number of glazed cuts and tapering ends. This controlled opacity gives the dwelling a marked presence on the ridge while concentrating its principal views toward the distant landscape and the blue band of hills beyond.
The plan complicates this apparently simple linear figure. A U-shaped arrangement of recessed slabs gathers the house around an open interior patio, creating a protected counterpoint to the site’s panoramic exposure. Arrival is deliberately compressed: a cobbled ramp rises between irregular stone retaining walls and leads toward a faceted incision in the concrete perimeter. Within this wedge, a glazed vestibule and stair reveal the inhabitable depth of the seemingly monolithic exterior.
Structure as Spatial and Formal Framework
The house depends on a structural system that makes span visible. Ribbed concrete slabs extend between lateral gables for about 40 m, limiting the need for intermediate supports and allowing the roof plane to register as a continuous horizontal field. Slender columns are placed with restraint, sometimes receding into planting and sometimes reflected in water, while the gables establish the principal load-bearing datum at each end of the composition.
Rather than masking its construction, the project uses structural and service elements to articulate space. Board-formed concrete retains horizontal grain, tie holes, and variations between pours, giving the large surfaces a measurable scale. The wing ends are deeply chamfered, reducing the apparent slab thickness as they approach the ground or water. Beneath the cantilevers, exposed drainage and service lines are painted orange-red, introducing a conspicuous technical layer within a palette otherwise governed by concrete, stone, timber, and vegetation. The visible systems resist the convention of the seamless concrete object by acknowledging the building’s operational infrastructure.
Courtyard, Water, and Environmental Moderation
The negative patio is the domestic center of the plan. Glazed elevations face inward across shallow water, pale mosaic surfaces, stone retaining walls, and clay paving, creating a landscape room distinct from the broader valley setting. The court does not simply provide a protected garden. It also organizes circulation between the wings, turning movement through the house into a repeated negotiation between enclosure, reflection, and framed views.
Water serves as both an environmental device and a perceptual instrument. Reflecting pools continue below projecting concrete planes, where their mirrored surfaces visually extend the chamfered edges and make the mass appear to hover above the terrain. The pools are intended to support local cooling through evaporation, although their climatic effect depends on shade, wind, and seasonal conditions. At the center of the court, a timber deck island sits beneath a flat concrete canopy carried by a single column. This mushroom-like element establishes a smaller outdoor room within the much larger structural enclosure, bringing a human scale to the expansive concrete frame.
Screens, Program, and Material Transitions
Program is distributed according to orientation, access, and degrees of privacy. The more secluded northern wing contains the suites, while the western edge brings living, dining, kitchen, and associated social spaces into a continuous perimeter facing the landscape. Garage, storage, laundry, and support spaces sit at the lower ground level, allowing the upper floor to function as a more open field of domestic occupation. The plan’s geometry is angular and discontinuous, but the zoning remains legible through the distinct treatment of each wing.
Along the bedroom wing, vertical timber screens mediate between rooms and exterior conditions. Fixed slatted panels and larger folding shutters provide varying levels of solar control, ventilation, and privacy, while their operation changes the facade from a uniform timber plane into a serrated sequence of projecting leaves. Material transitions reinforce this environmental gradient: clipped lawn meets planted stone plinths, which support rough concrete walls and deep shaded soffits. Under the elevated slabs, philodendron planting occupies the cooler undercroft, while timber ceilings, glazed openings, and dark floor finishes carry the sequence inward. In the living room, the exposed concrete wall remains present as an interior surface, placing furniture and domestic occupation against the same structural material that defines the house from the hillside.
Credits and Additional Notes
- Structural Engineers: MRG, Eng. Dirk Mader
- Landscape Designers: Oliveira
- Client: Santek
- Construction Company: Santek
- Lighting Design: Lanfranchi Consultorias
- Manufacturers and Material Suppliers: Stone, Topseal, Villagres
- Photographs: Daniel Santo and Manuel Sa
