Box House is a small caretaker’s house on an island on the North Coast of the State of São Paulo, Brazil. Designed by Alan Chu & Cristiano Kato in 2008, the house has a total floor area of 36m² (388ft²).
The new building has 2 floors, a white suspended box, where the bedroom is and it is possible to see the continent and the São Sebastião Channel. Under it, at street level, are the living room, kitchen and bathroom. The materials specification was guided by criteria such as availability, cost, and easy of execution, besides the possibility to combine them in a harmonious manner. The wood used on some doors and windows, staircase, shelves and furniture is leftover from material used to make scaffoldings and molds for the white box reinforced concrete structure. The sloping terrain conditions were used as a conductor lead for the concept, The 3.00 m x 5.00 m white box is supported on one side by an already existing retaining wall and on the other by a wall built with the same kind of rocks used in other local constructions. This movement shapes the other 3 spaces of the construction, the access yard, between the box and the retaining wall that curves following the parking lot ramp’s floor, the courtyard, between the box and the rock and the void created under the box, where the living room is. The impact caused by the image of concise volume, in comparison with the large rock’s amorphous exuberance, gives it a strange feeling.
— Alan Chu & Cristiano Kato
Drawings:
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Photographs by Djan Chu
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