Estúdio Rossi Arquitetos Sets Two Eucalyptus Glulam Pavilions on a Concrete Base for a Family Home in Atibaia

Atibaia sits about an hour from São Paulo. It has long been a weekend escape, a place for second homes that come alive on Saturdays and stay shut the rest of the week. The MA House, completed in 2025 by Estúdio Rossi Arquitetos under Bruno Rossi and Marilia Giordano Rossi, breaks from that pattern. It is a permanent home for a couple and their four children, a family with long ties to the region through outdoor sport. The 680 m² house sits on a sloping, trapezoidal plot inside a gated community, and it is meant to be used every day of the year.

The interest lies in how plainly the house is put together. A concrete base takes the slope and the services. On top of it sit two independent pavilions framed in prefabricated, certified eucalyptus glulam. One holds the social rooms and the other holds the private ones, and a stone courtyard sits between them. That arrangement is common enough in Brazilian hillside houses. What matters here is the discipline of the timber grid and the way the two pavilions are turned against each other to fit an awkward site.

Two Pavilions on a Trapezoid

The aerial view states the strategy clearly. The social pavilion runs parallel to the access road under a large pitched roof. The private pavilion swings onto the lot's diagonal under a flat roof. The rotation is not a gesture for its own sake. A trapezoidal plot leaves leftover wedges whenever you drop a rectangle onto it, and turning the second wing claims those wedges as garden, pool deck and courtyard instead of setback.

At ground level the result is a house that reads as two buildings in a landscape rather than one large mass. The kitchen and dining pavilion glows behind a low timber-edged eave at dusk, and a stone path leads across the lawn to the pool. The single-storey bedroom wing faces the water across the paving. The solar array on the white roof is a quiet reminder that this is a working house, not a holiday house.

A Guarded Street Face

Toward the road the house gives little away. A deep timber eave hangs over white panels, a rubble stone wall anchors the base, and a planted concrete bed softens the edge. The entrance porch uses the same vocabulary at a closer range: timber columns, a stone wall, a slatted wood panel and a thin glazed band tucked under the roof.

We read this restraint as deliberate. In a gated condominium the street is semi-private already, but a family with four children still needs a threshold. The side elevation, with its slatted panel set between awning windows and lavender along the lawn, shows the same approach. Openings are controlled where neighbours can see in, and they are generous where the house faces its own garden.

The Courtyard as Hinge

The central courtyard does the real organisational work. It structures circulation between the two pavilions and sits halfway between architecture and landscape, partly roofed by the transitional plane that joins the wings. Irregular flagstones, a stone pier and exposed timber beams make it feel like an outdoor room, with a palm rising beyond the roof line.

Cate Poli Paisagismo's planting keeps this zone from turning into a corridor. Tropical foliage presses against the rubble walls, and the terrace is furnished as a place to sit. The covered terrace, with its slatted doors and rough stone, shows how much of daily life in this climate happens in the band between inside and out.

Living Under a Glulam Grid

Inside the social pavilion the regular post-and-beam grid is left fully exposed. Developed by Ita Engenharia with StudioBim Engenharia, the frame allows long spans and wide openings while keeping waste low. You read the structure as rhythm: beams running overhead, columns marking the edges of the glazing, built-in joinery slotted between them.

Against all that warm timber, the stone fireplace wall supplies weight. The media wall on the opposite side faces glazing that looks straight into dense trees, and at dusk the room opens through sheer curtains onto the planted courtyard. The pitched roof gives the pavilion height and supports cross-ventilation, which matters more in a house used through Atibaia's summers than any decorative move.

Rooms Built for Weekdays

The photographs are unusually candid about who lives here. A child rides a skateboard past the dining table, and the pool and garden show through curtains beyond the built-in storage. That candour helps the argument. A weekend house can tolerate preciousness. A house for six people every day needs durable surfaces, plenty of storage and an open plan that can absorb noise and movement.

The long living and dining space meets that need without fuss. Joinery lines one side, glazing lines the other, and the timber ceiling ties the whole length together so that the room never breaks into separate zones.

A Kitchen at the Centre

The kitchen sits under layered beams that step down in scale from the main structure, and afternoon sun reaches deep across the floor where the family dog sleeps. Stone returns here as a backsplash and as a wall hung with plants, and the open shelves keep everyday objects in view rather than hidden behind doors.

The details are practical. A fruit drawer sits in the island, a sliding window brings in late light at the corner, and the green outside is visible from almost every working position. This is a kitchen designed to be used heavily, and the material palette of wood, stone and tile will age well under that use.

The Concrete Base

Below the timber the house changes register. A cantilevered concrete stair with board-marked walls and a glass balustrade rises toward a timber-framed window, a clear moment where the heavy base meets the light frame. The technical and service level absorbs the slope, the parking and the infrastructure, so that the pavilions above can stay simple.

The supporting rooms say a lot about the clients. A real workshop, with a pegboard of tools, a rolling chest and a timber workbench with a vise, sits alongside a home office with a road bike mounted on the wall above a long desk and a hillside view beyond. These are rooms for people whose time outdoors shapes their week, and the architects give them proper space instead of leftover corners.

The Private Wing

The rotated private pavilion is reached along a narrow corridor lined in wood panelling, which opens on one side to a stone wall and large-leaf planting. The compression of the corridor makes the bedrooms feel more open by contrast. One bedroom pairs a rough stone wall with exposed beams and sheer curtains that open onto a sunlit lawn.

The bathrooms continue the palette at a smaller scale: a timber vanity, travertine tile and a slatted wood shower wall, with daylight coming through glass. The flat roof keeps this wing lower and quieter than the social pavilion, a sensible way to mark the shift from shared rooms to private ones.

Plans and Drawings

The ground floor plan shows the base for what it is: a row of six parking spaces, a curved entry ramp and a stair fitted into an irregular boundary. The first floor plan shows the L-shaped composition, with the long living pavilion on one side, the row of bedrooms on the other and the pool framed by pebbles. The roof plan reveals the large pitched roof against the bedroom wing's flat roof and its open court.

The longitudinal section sets the long glazed pavilion against the two-level volume under its sloped roof, which makes the relationship between base and timber easy to read. The construction detail is worth studying closely. It shows how the timber beams carry sliding glass panels on stacked tracks, how the roof tile layers build up, and how the exterior floor meets the enclosure, which is the junction that makes the indoor-outdoor continuity actually work.

Why This Project Matters

Brazil has a strong tradition of hillside houses in concrete, and writers have linked this project to precedents such as Paulo Mendes da Rocha's Gerassi House and Angelo Bucci's Casa Ubatuba. The MA House keeps the concrete where it belongs, in the ground, and moves the inhabited levels into prefabricated eucalyptus glulam. Certified plantation eucalyptus is a material Brazil has in abundance, and a clean post-and-beam grid shows how readily it can carry a substantial family house.

Just as relevant is the program. As peri-urban towns like Atibaia shift from weekend retreats to places people live full time, their houses have to work on a Tuesday as well as on a holiday. Estúdio Rossi Arquitetos answers with two clear pavilions, a courtyard that does real work, and generous space for workshops, bikes and children. You don't need a spectacular site or form to make a convincing house. A careful reading of the lot and the family will do.

MA House – Atibaia by Estúdio Rossi Arquitetos (Bruno Rossi and Marilia Giordano Rossi), Atibaia, Brazil. Area: 680 m². Completed: 2025. Photography: André Scarpa.

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