Equipe Lamas Rotates Four Pavilions Around a Rescued Ipê Tree in the Brazilian Cerrado

Brasilia's urban sprawl gives way quickly to the Cerrado, the vast tropical savannah that covers a quarter of Brazil. Fifteen minutes from the city center, on a 2,000 square meter plot of red earth and eucalyptus, Equipe Lamas planted a house that behaves less like a building and more like a weathervane, its four volumes pinwheeling around an uncovered courtyard. The project's name, Cata-vento (Portuguese for "weathervane"), is literal: each block catches light and breeze from a different direction, rotating off a shared center so that every room negotiates its own relationship with the arid landscape outside.

What makes Cata-vento House genuinely interesting is the economy of means with which it produces spatial richness. The material palette is modest: cementitious floors, naval plywood ceilings, painted masonry, metal beams on concrete pillars. Yet the rotational plan creates both introspective and extroverted conditions simultaneously. A single ipê tree that existed on the site before construction was uprooted and replanted as the courtyard's central sculpture, a move that anchors the entire composition in the specificity of its place.

A Pinwheel on Red Earth

From the air, the logic is immediate. Four white, flat-roofed volumes sit on the red terrain like cards fanned from a single hand, each one rotated slightly off axis so that gaps between them frame views of eucalyptus canopy and open sky. The 375 square meters of built area occupy a modest footprint within the plot, leaving the majority of the ground to gravel, native planting, and a lap pool that stretches along one edge. The low horizontal profile keeps the house subordinate to the mature trees around it.

Samuel Lamas, who led the design, treats the exterior walls as a continuous pale earth-toned surface that reads almost as a terrain feature rather than architecture. Timber soffits soften the underside of the overhanging roofs, giving the covered walkways between volumes a warm, inhabited quality that contrasts with the bleached stucco above.

The Courtyard as Climate Machine

The uncovered courtyard at the heart of Cata-vento House does more than organize circulation. Concrete stepping stones float over a shallow water plane that humidifies the dry Cerrado air before it enters the rooms through full-height tippers. Geometric planters define the courtyard's edges, and at the center stands the rescued ipê, its gnarled trunk casting lace-like shadows across the white walls. The water reflects the sky, pulling daylight deep into what could otherwise be a dark core.

Every volume opens to this central void through steel-framed sliding doors, so the courtyard functions as a shared outdoor room, simultaneously private and connected. The design recalls mid-century Brazilian modernism's love of the patio, but the rotational geometry gives each wing a slightly different angle on the tree, the water, and the sky above.

Street Face and Threshold

From the street, the house is deliberately reticent. Horizontal timber louvers and black-framed glazing sit behind mature trees, offering privacy without hostility. The entry sequence is compressed: a narrow glass corridor punched between two pale pink stucco walls funnels visitors from the public realm into the courtyard beyond. It is a classic threshold strategy, tightening space before releasing it, and Equipe Lamas executes it with restraint.

At dusk, the glazed pavilion that connects two rendered volumes glows between the eucalyptus branches, revealing just enough of the interior to signal warmth without exposing the life within. The house communicates openness to those inside and discretion to those outside, a balancing act well suited to a couple seeking retreat.

Plywood, Concrete, and the Logic of Low Cost

The interiors double down on the project's economy. Naval plywood lines the ceilings and reappears as kitchen joinery and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, giving a continuous grain that warms the otherwise monochrome palette of white walls and cementitious floors. Built-in cabinetry with open niches displays ceramics and hanging ferns, blurring the line between furniture and architecture. Gray granite appears only in the wet areas, a pragmatic upgrade where water demands it.

The structural logic is equally straightforward: metal beams span between concrete pillars, allowing the walls to be non-load-bearing masonry that can be punched with generous openings wherever daylight or ventilation is needed. There is nothing experimental here, only careful application of common construction methods to achieve spatial generosity on a tight budget.

Living with the Landscape

Floor-to-ceiling glazing wraps the living spaces so that the Cerrado is never out of sight. Leather chairs in the living room face the courtyard tree through a wall of glass; the dining area looks out over dry gravel and native shrubs. Sheer curtains filter the harsh afternoon sun without blocking it entirely, turning direct light into a diffuse glow that moves across the plywood ceiling as the day turns.

The landscaping was designed as an extension of the biome itself: native trees and grasses rather than imported lawn. Solar panels heat the pool and domestic water year-round, a sensible concession to the region's abundant sunlight. Together, these moves position Cata-vento House as a participant in its ecology rather than an imposition upon it.

Between Inside and Out

The fully retractable steel-framed glazed walls are the key detail. When open, the living pavilion becomes a covered terrace, its reflecting pool extending the courtyard water feature outward toward the lap pool. At twilight, the boundary between interior and exterior dissolves entirely, and the furniture, the plywood ceiling, the potted plants all register as outdoor elements. This is not merely an aesthetic choice; in the Cerrado's dry climate, maximizing airflow through the house is a serious thermal strategy.

The rooftop terrace accessible by steel ladder adds a final layer of inhabitation, placing occupants above the tree canopy with an unobstructed view of the savannah horizon. It is a small gesture, but it completes the house's ambition to engage every direction: inward to the courtyard, outward to the biome, and upward to the sky.

The Ipê at the Center

Replanting an existing tree as the compositional heart of a house is a gesture that could easily feel sentimental. Here it works because the ipê's sculptural form, its knotted trunk, its bare branches casting graphic shadows on rendered walls, earns its position. The tree is not decorative. It organizes the courtyard, anchors the rotation of the four volumes, and connects the architecture back to the land it displaced. Dappled light through its canopy animates the white surfaces in ways that no fixed shading device could replicate.

Plans and Drawings

The site plan reveals the rotational logic most clearly: the four rectangular volumes splay outward from the central courtyard pool like the blades of the weathervane the house is named for. The floor plan shows how the program distributes neatly: garage and services in one block; TV room, office, and master suite in another; two bedrooms with shared bath and atelier in a third; and the open-plan living, dining, and kitchen in the fourth, which slides open to the balcony. Sections confirm the flat roof profile and the slatted courtyard space that mediates between the flanking volumes, while the four elevations demonstrate how solid and glazed surfaces alternate to manage exposure on each orientation.

Why This Project Matters

Cata-vento House is a reminder that compositional invention does not require exotic materials or swollen budgets. By rotating four simple volumes around a courtyard, Equipe Lamas generates a plan that is simultaneously centripetal and centrifugal, pulling the family inward toward the shared tree and water while pushing each room outward toward the savannah. The passive climate strategies, operable glazing, courtyard humidification, and solar water heating, are standard tools deployed with uncommon precision.

More broadly, the project offers a model for building in the Cerrado that respects the biome rather than replacing it. The native landscaping, the preserved ipê, and the low horizontal posture all signal an architecture of negotiation rather than domination. In a region where suburban development too often defaults to walled compounds and imported turf, a house that opens itself to the landscape and builds with plywood and painted block feels like a quiet act of resistance.

Cata-vento House by Equipe Lamas (lead architect: Samuel Lamas), Brasilia, Brazil. 375 m², completed 2022. Photography by Joana França.

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