DB Estudio de Arquitectura Wraps an L-Shaped Bolivian House Around Its Namesake Tree

Most houses claim a relationship with their landscape. Few let a single tree dictate the entire plan. House Jeviò, a 596 m² residence in Bolivia designed by DB Estudio de Arquitectura, does exactly that: the project takes its name from a large Jevió tree that already occupied the site, and the architecture wraps around it rather than replacing it. The result is an L-shaped composition of two slightly offset rectangular volumes, placed deliberately against one property boundary to maximize garden area on the opposite side.

What makes this project worth studying is the disciplined way it balances formal rigor with porosity. The architects, led by Daniela Bejarano Vaca, Dayane Vega Garcia, Rodrigo Farell, and Guillermo Soto, organize the house around principles of order, modulation, rhythm, and spatial continuity. The sloped site adds another layer of complexity, with floor plates stepping down with the grade to create split-level conditions that feel effortless in section but are anything but simple to coordinate. Timber cladding, concrete soffits, and generous glazing give the house a material palette that is warm without being precious.

A Street Presence Built from Restraint

The street facade reads as two timber-clad volumes stacked with a slight offset, hovering above a recessed carport. Vertical wood slats give the upper mass a rhythmic texture that catches light differently throughout the day. Palm trees flank the driveway, establishing a green threshold before you even reach the front door. There is no grand entrance portico, no ostentatious gate. The house announces itself through proportion and material honesty.

At night, the composition sharpens. The timber panels glow faintly against a planted plinth, and the offset between the two volumes becomes more legible as shadow deepens. The architects clearly understood that a house this size could easily overwhelm a streetscape; the decision to break the massing into two distinct bars and recess the ground level prevents that from happening.

Interior Courtyards as Spatial Connective Tissue

The L-shaped plan creates a natural courtyard condition, and the architects exploit it fully. Interior planted gardens appear at critical junctures, pulling daylight into corridors and living spaces while providing visual relief from the concrete structure. A covered walkway with exposed concrete columns runs along one edge, turning circulation into an event rather than an afterthought.

Narrow corridors benefit from clerestory skylight slots that wash the ceiling with light and draw the eye upward. The effect is spatial compression followed by release: tight passages give way to double-height volumes or open-air gardens. It is a strategy borrowed from courtyard house typologies across Latin America, but applied here with a precision that feels distinctly contemporary.

Living Spaces That Dissolve Boundaries

The open-plan living and dining areas occupy the hinge point of the L, where the two volumes meet. Floor-to-ceiling glazing on both sides places you between planted courtyards and the rear garden, so the interior never feels sealed off from the landscape. A long timber dining table anchors the space, its scale appropriate to the generous ceiling height. Terrazzo flooring runs continuously, reinforcing the sense of a single ground plane extending from inside to out.

The kitchen opens directly onto the lawn and pool through full-height glass panels, collapsing the distinction between cooking space and garden. A concrete wall on one side provides thermal mass and visual weight, preventing the transparency from feeling insubstantial. The material dialogue between warm timber, cool concrete, and reflective glass is consistent throughout: each element does structural or environmental work, not just decorative duty.

The Garden Side: Pool, Lawn, and Mature Trees

By pushing the house to one property boundary, the architects freed up the opposite side for a generous garden that accommodates a swimming pool, a lawn, and the mature trees that give the project its character. The rear elevation reveals the covered terrace supported by slender columns, a shaded threshold between the air-conditioned interior and the Bolivian sun. The timber-clad upper volume frames the garden without enclosing it, maintaining sightlines to the sky.

At twilight, the illuminated glass facades turn the garden into a stage, with the house as its backdrop. The pool reflects both the architecture and the tree canopy, doubling the visual depth of the site. It is a reminder that the best garden design is often the simplest: preserve what is already there, and build around it.

Evening Atmospheres and the Dusk Reveal

Some houses look better at night, and House Jeviò is one of them. The two-storey glass and timber facade, framed by eucalyptus trees, takes on a lantern-like quality as interior lighting spills out. The covered dining terrace, with its heavy concrete frame, becomes an intimate room open to the courtyard and pool. These photographs are not just atmospheric marketing; they reveal how the architects calibrated transparency and enclosure so that the house performs differently at different hours.

The nighttime view of the front elevation is equally telling. The garage recedes into shadow, and the illuminated upper volume floats above it, the vertical slats filtering light into a soft glow. Palm trees become silhouettes. The house communicates calm without trying too hard.

Private Rooms and Framed Views

The upper level is more introverted, as private floors should be. A freestanding bathtub sits beneath a horizontal clerestory window that admits light without sacrificing privacy, a simple move that elevates a bathroom from functional to spatial. From an upper window, a eucalyptus tree is framed like a painting, its canopy hovering above the lawn and lower facade. These moments are deliberate: the architects designed views, not just rooms.

Plans and Drawings

The ground floor plan confirms the L-shaped strategy: one bar runs parallel to the street, the other extends perpendicular, nearly reaching the rear boundary of the site. The interior courtyard sits at the intersection, with the pool and garden occupying the open quadrant. The upper floor plan shows a reduced footprint, stepping back to create terraces that look down over the pool deck. The axonometric drawing clarifies the volumetric logic: two bars, offset in plan and section, with landscape filling the gaps between them.

The sections are where the sloping site becomes legible. Floor plates step down with the grade, creating split-level conditions that differentiate social zones from private ones without resorting to corridors. One section reveals a double-height living space with a mezzanine, explaining the generous vertical proportions visible in the photographs. The elevations confirm the disciplined material palette: solid timber-clad panels alternate with gridded glazing, and the composition stays horizontal even as the ground drops away.

Why This Project Matters

House Jeviò demonstrates that starting with a constraint, in this case a tree, can produce better architecture than starting with a blank slate. The decision to name the house after the Jevió tree is not just sentimental; it signals a design methodology that privileges existing conditions over imposed geometries. The L-shaped plan, the pushed boundary, the stepped sections: each move follows logically from the initial commitment to preserving the site's most valuable asset.

In a broader context, this project is a quiet argument against the tabula rasa approach that still dominates residential development across Latin America. DB Estudio de Arquitectura shows that a house can be generous in scale, 596 m² is no small footprint, while still deferring to its landscape. The timber, concrete, and glass palette is not revolutionary, but the way these materials are deployed to modulate light, frame views, and mediate between inside and outside is handled with genuine skill. It is the kind of house that gets better the longer you spend inside it.

House Jeviò by DB Estudio de Arquitectura. Bolivia. 596 m². Completed 2024. Photography by Paul Renaud.

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