An old building in Brasilia designed by Oscar Niemeyer – which in its last years functioned as a school – was reactivated with the purpose of hosting new projects.
One of them is the Studio hundred and 7 N, proposal of the Debaixo do Bloco Architecture to receive a cosmopolitan client who lives alone, receives friends and travels a lot.
In an old classroom of 8.50 m long by 8.00 m wide and Ceiling height of 3,20 m the architect Clay Rodrigues proposed a layout that distributes Living Room, Kitchen, Home Office, Bedroom and Bathroom connected.
The Mi Casa project was a dichotomy between the enthusiasm and the objectivity of the creative process. Designing for an architect, by architects, was and always will be a challenge, as we sought to create a practical, functional and timeless home. As in all Studio + projects, we sought an architecture that reflected personal taste but also followed the desire to simplify our lives. This trend became key in the conceptual development of the parti. Clear volumes and pure geometries gave the design parti rationality and harmony.
The New York—based architectural firm Pei Cobb Freed & Partners has been selected to design a major expansion to IESB Brasilia, an international university based in Brazil’s capital, that will more than double the size of the campus with new facilities and open space.
IESB’s inward-focused existing campus will be transformed by an L-shaped complex featuring a new academic allée and a generous entry precinct with facilities that serve both the university and the public.
The Franca House is located in na urban plot in one of the residential areas in Brasília, Brazil, called Lago Norte (North Lake). Here the recent low in the rent prices and the estabilization in the prices of the land have favoured a change in the neighborhood´s dwellers profile. The settlement of young families with children besides the occupation of the houses by new residential programs such as student shared houses have increased the density of inhabitants. In our view this transformation creates a new opportunity to reactivate the idea of the house as an extension of the city and vice-versa, which is a way of seeing the public space that was usual for the families that lived there in decades before. Therefore the fundamental idea of the project was to create a strong possibility of connection between the public space (the street) and the private space (the house).
The house is located in a residential area far away from the city center in Brasília. The weather in this part of Brazil is characterized by a thermal amplitude that causes the temperatures to be normally mild in the morning and either hot or very hot during the afternoons. The neighboring lots allows the buildings to be very close from each other, however, the view to the west; the one that is directly exposed to the afternoon sun, has unobstructed views towards the valley.
The “South Wing” was the first residential zone to be built in Brasília´s original plan. The local commerce typology in that zone is defined by two stories buildings connected to each other side by side along the commercial streets between the “superquadras” (superblocks). They face the street in one side and the residential superblocks on the other side. Lucio Costa´s idea was to connect both sides through the buildings. However, over the years the most of the owners shut themselves away from the residential area, closing their “backsides” with fences or blind walls, turning their facades exclusively to the street.
“The ceiling used to be decorative, a symbolic plane, a place invested with intense iconography. (…) Now, it has become an entire factory of equipment that enables us to exist, a space so deep that it begins to compete with the architecture. It is a domain over which architects have lost all control, a zone surrendered to other professions.” Rem Koolhaas, Venice Biennial. This restaurant is located on the rooftop of one of the newest unit of an international chain hotel located in the centre of Brasília. This is a type of space that is often impersonal, where standardized characteristics are kept throughout its units all over the world. In this project, we were interested in exploring the tension between characteristics that could be understood both as undefined and specific in a hotel building. Therefore, the project aimed to stress the differences between its two main surfaces: the floor and the ceiling. The floor is neutral and impersonal. The ceiling has a specific design with a clear iconographic reference.
This house; Casa Clara, is mainly a small house, strong personality and clear solution (clear means Clara in Portuguese). The entire house is delicately supported on the downhill terrain. The landscape have a free view from the interior, even the layout is clear, simple solution with elegant design, in some ways this house is very minimal.
The site of the Osler House lies at the edge of Brasilia’s pilot plan, at the tip of one of Paranoá Lake estuaries. The house is a poetic commentary on modern architecture, above all on Brazilian modernism, starting from a contemporary re-reading of the building materials and techniques.
In a house built by the master of Architecture in wood, Zanine Caldas the office Debaixo do Bloco Architecture had the role of requalifying the residence. Built in Brasilia in 1988, with 3.800 m², it has a privileged view where it is possible to see the main architectonic works of the capital of the country.
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