Dois Trópicos

“... the front door continues to appeal to our sense arrival. Call it the ceremony of coming home.”
Akiko Busch

The general purpose is to create a contemporary element that, when opened, would bring back some lost time of ancient forms of construction, a slow passing of time, contact with earth it feels like "home".

The concept of the project is a hybrid space, there is no determination or boundaries. A place that integrates gastronomy, the practice of yoga and botany, where people can feel in every way the importance of spending time to take care of themselves, slowly and with pleasure.

You can have lunch slowly, if you want to take a shower to freshen up, have a massage or practice a yoga class and enjoy or buy rare species of plants and flowers at the botanical store. A commercial space that creates a homelike hosting experience, using nostalgia and natural matter, crafted by artisan hands that desire to achieve not perfection but real environments.

Every material has its own characteristics and limits for its definition. To work on the threshold of its possibilities - but not defying it - is indeed a fertile ground for advanced thinking and technique development.

Materiality builds the crossing planes that then become carriers for a tonal rhythm; the resulting immersion brings up new intimacy to the architectural space. All materials were thought to reverberate the connection between nature and external spaces.

The soil reacts allegorically to the sunlight movement along the day, turning walls, ceilings and the floor not into limits or boundaries, but into canvases for the light to express itself gradually in various forms. (As it is possible to enjoy comfortably great and authentic food, full of flavours).

The material used was created by a process of cooking the subtle varied colours of earth into bricks, allying the technical drawings to the empirical exercise of craftsmanship. The same material was projected onto walls and ceilings, honouring and expanding its plasticity; it expands our senses, bringing texture, tone gradation and detail to the delicate gesture of drawing spaces, even inviting us for a pause to feel the smell of wet earth when it rains.

The staircase was built using raw materials, some leftovers, but although there was a precise drawing, the result is both gestual and intimate, due to small imperfections.

By contrast, the facade is technological, drafted and executed with precision, thought to allow sun and wind in, to avoid artificial air conditioning systems.

The façade is made of polycarbonate panels designed specifically because of its translucid properties and durability. These panels were assembled in aluminum frames that rotate and slide to create different opening patterns.

Externally, the back patio was not pavimented to allow for drainage and was covered with granite gravel for mechanical resistance.

The furniture and all main floor is all made of handcrafted bricks, using different earth tones and textures, made by local craftsmen

MNMA studio