Architect Jaques Suchodolski was faced with a dilemma to design a home for construction in crowded, high-rise ridden São Paulo, Brazil. The site was a tiny 10m x 35m lot, sandwiched in a city neighborhood. In spite of the small footprint, the requirements aspired to a very comfortable home with five bedrooms, garden space with fruit trees and the biggest swimming pool the architect could manage.

So the only way to achieve this was to go up—a vertical building like a town house. But, the neighborhood in which the site is located has several building restrictions, height being one of them.

To fulfill aspirations yet stay within the city codes, an underground basement was planned and designed in a way to allow for cars and daily leisure activities to blend or even substitute for the upper living quarters, when needed, family gatherings and entertaining in the garden.

The height limitation imposed very slim beams in order to avoid compromising the ceiling heights. The structural grid was conceived together with the volumes and voids and openings of the house. All together steel piles included12 columns disposed symmetrically in three rows of four. The aesthetics of the conception derived from the decision to utilise only prefabicated profiles, which produced little or no waste, made of electrofused SAC steel, an atmospheric corrosion resistant steel.

Instead of using wood casts and supports for the concrete slabs, "I" beams were temporarily "misplaced" to support the cure of prefabicated concrete slabs, thus allowing the full use of the basement space throughout the construction.

Internal wood finishes is completely made of reforested eucalyptus, including the all wood floors, windows and door frames. In the outside only certified reforested hard wood was used in the finishes. Solar panels heat water, and rain water can be directed to a storage container for later reuse.

The Urban House commands neighbourhood attention in a region where concrete is predominant in most residential constructions. "This house attracts so much attention from passersby that we have a collection of notes dropped in the mailbox expressing admiration of the colourful design," said Suchodolski. "That was something I'd never seen before."

Key information

Number of storeys	4
Living area (m2)	585 m2
New-build home

Location of steel solutions

External wall
Floor
Foundation
Light steel sections
Roof

Click to view floor plans