EKS Residence: A Tropical Weekend House in Guaruja

Guaruja is a beach city on Sao Paulo's coast where the Atlantic Forest reaches the sand. The trees are dense, the air is wet, and the weekend houses are the best architecture in Brazil's residential scene. EKS Residence, designed by Jacobsen Arquitetura, is a weekend house for a family of surfers on a corner plot inside a gated condominium. The brief was to build a house that lives as much in the garden as it does under a roof.

Jacobsen's answer is a horizontal metal slab that shelters the entire ground floor, with two dark timber volumes set at an angle above it. The ground floor is open on all sides: living, dining, kitchen, and veranda merge into the tropical garden and pool. The upper floor holds the bedrooms in two separate blocks, one cantilevered over the forest, the other rotated to catch a different view. The angle between the two volumes is the design move that makes the house.

The Street: Timber and Steel at Dusk

From the street, the house presents a long horizontal metal roof with timber garage doors at ground level and a dark timber-slatted volume above. The upper block has a pitched roof that rises to a ridge, giving the house a domestic silhouette despite its industrial materials. At dusk, the timber slats glow warm from the interior light behind them. The ground floor recedes into shadow. The effect is a floating timber lantern above a dark plinth.

The Veranda: Living Under the Ceiling

The ground floor is defined by its ceiling, not its walls. A continuous timber-lined soffit extends from the interior living room out over the veranda and into the garden. The living area has cream sofas and leather lounge chairs. The veranda has orange poufs and a rattan armchair. The transition between inside and outside is unmarked: the same timber ceiling, the same polished floor, the same tropical air. Floor-to-ceiling glass doors slide open to erase the boundary entirely.

This is the correct approach for a coastal house in the tropics. The veranda is the primary room. The living room is the veranda with glass. The distinction between the two is weather, not architecture.

The Staircase and Entry

The entry sequence passes through a covered walkway with vertical timber slats and garden planting. Light filters through the slats in stripes. Inside, a floating timber staircase rises from an indoor garden of tropical plants. The treads are cantilevered from a white wall with no visible stringers. The slatted timber ceiling runs overhead. The staircase is the hinge between the open ground floor and the private upper level.

Garden and Pool

The garden wraps the house on all sides. Stone paths wind through tropical planting: palms, heliconias, philodendrons, and bird of paradise. The landscaping, designed with Daniel Nunes, mixes native Atlantic Forest species with tropical accents. The pool sits at the rear, framed by the open ground floor on one side and dense planting on the other. From the pool, you look back at the house: the long timber ceiling, the two upper volumes, and the forest canopy above everything.

The Upper Volumes: Angled and Cantilevered

Two timber-clad volumes sit above the ground floor slab, rotated at an angle to each other. The first holds the master suite: a room with a timber-lined ceiling, white bedding, a timber bench, and floor-to-ceiling glass opening to the forest canopy. The second volume, angled and cantilevered over the garden, holds additional bedrooms and a sitting area. The sitting area has a carved white relief panel on one wall, a desk and chair, and vertical timber slats that cast striped sunlight across the floor.

The angle between the two volumes creates different orientations, different views, and a sheltered outdoor terrace on the roof of the ground floor between them. It also gives each bedroom its own relationship with the forest, rather than the uniform view a parallel arrangement would produce.

Dining and Living: Timber and Paper

The dining room sits under the timber ceiling with a long timber table and grey upholstered chairs. A row of white paper globe pendant lamps hangs above, providing soft diffused light. The living room is adjacent: a tufted leather daybed, white sofas, a timber coffee table, and a built-in linear fireplace set into a timber-panelled wall. The material palette is consistent throughout: timber ceiling, timber wall panels, polished stone floors, and furniture in leather, linen, and rattan. No strong colours. The garden provides all the green.

Plans

The ground floor plan shows the corner plot with the house positioned at the front for street privacy, opening to the pool and garden at the rear. Living, dining, and kitchen sit under the continuous roof slab. The upper floor plan shows the two angled volumes connected by the stair: the master suite in one wing, additional bedrooms in the other. The roof plan reveals the geometry most clearly: two grey rectangles set at an angle above the rectangular ground floor, with the pool and a circular spa below.

Why This Project Matters

Brazilian weekend houses have a long lineage, from Oscar Niemeyer to Marcio Kogan. Jacobsen Arquitetura belongs to this tradition. The EKS Residence is not radical. It does not invent a new typology. What it does is execute the open tropical house with precision: the right ceiling height, the right timber species, the right relationship between veranda and garden. The angled upper volumes add a compositional tension that lifts the project above the standard L-shaped beach house.

If you are designing a tropical residence, a weekend house, or any project where the boundary between inside and outside is the primary architectural question, this house is worth studying for how a single continuous ceiling and two rotated volumes create a house that is simultaneously open and sheltered.

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Project credits: EKS Residence by Jacobsen Arquitetura. Guaruja, Sao Paulo, Brazil.