Felipe Hess Arquitetos Splits a São Paulo House into Three Blocks and Threads Patios Through a 60-Meter Lot

A plot that measures 10 by 60 meters is a familiar problem in São Paulo's older residential neighborhoods. The default answer is a long, solid volume with light at both ends and a dim middle. Felipe Hess Arquitetos refuses that default at Casa Praça in Jardim Paulistano. The studio breaks the house into three separate blocks and opens patios between them, so the lot becomes a sequence of built and unbuilt rooms rather than one corridor with bedrooms attached.

What interests us is less the patio idea, which has a long Brazilian lineage, than the way the program is stacked against the street. Service and guest functions sit at the front as a buffer. The kitchen holds the middle. The living room, the couple's suite and the garden withdraw to the far end of the lot. The deeper you walk into the plot, the more private the house becomes, and each step forward passes through open air before it reaches the next room.

Pink Walls as the Organizing Material

Most people will remember this house for its color. High stucco walls in a dusty pink line the passages that run along the plot, and their rough texture catches the hard São Paulo light all day. Along the narrow edge of the lot, the walls stop reading as boundaries and start to read as streets. Cobbled alleys run between them, and palms rise over the top.

The move is smart because it changes how a long, thin site feels. A side setback that would usually hold a utility path becomes a lane with a gate at one end, planting along its length and sky overhead. The house takes the plot's main weakness, its length, and turns it into a walk.

Thresholds That Slow You Down

Entry is staged rather than announced. A timber pivot door opens onto a small courtyard of pebbles, moss and clay jars, with a vine climbing the wall. Inside, a plastered corridor with a lit built-in bench and a skylight gives way to another pivot door and another cobbled path.

These are small gestures, but they carry the logic of the plan. The architects never let you pass straight from street to interior. You get a pause, a change of floor surface and a frame of sky before the next room. That rhythm matters on a plot where everything is lined up along a single axis.

The Patios Between the Blocks

The patios do the heavy environmental work. Each block faces open air on at least two sides, so daylight reaches rooms that would be cut off in a continuous volume. Glazed, timber-framed walls face the courtyards, and a small tree or a rough timber table is enough to make each one usable rather than purely ornamental.

Details like the glowing niche cut into the pink stucco and the weathered bench beneath it show that these spaces were designed to be occupied, not just looked at. If the name Praça refers to these open rooms, it fits. Each patio works as a small public square inside a private house.

The Living Block and the Garden

The back block holds the living room and its fireplace, with the couple's suite above. A canopy with a timber soffit projects over the garden facade, and a covered terrace with a plank ceiling and ceiling fans extends the room outdoors. Beyond it, the rear garden holds a pool, barbecue, sauna and gym, linked by a pergola and enclosed by stone walls and planting designed by Flavia Tiraboschi Paisagismo.

Inside, the palette is calm: a plaster fireplace with a stone ledge, sliding glass doors to the courtyard, sheer curtains filtering the afternoon light. A floating green marble ledge set against timber panelling is one of the few moments of richness. Because the living room sits at the end of the lot, the architects could open it fully to the garden without any sightline back to the street.

The Kitchen as the House's Center

The central block holds the kitchen, which the architects describe as the core of daily life, along with the dining room. The daughters' bedrooms are on the upper floor. Placing the kitchen in the middle rather than at the service front is a clear statement of priorities. Cooking and eating sit where the household's routes cross.

The dining room makes good use of its position. A long oak table and bentwood cane chairs run beside a glazed wall facing a planted courtyard, and a stone-edged pass-through connects directly to the kitchen. Light arrives from the patios on either side, so the room shifts in character from midday glare to low evening sun.

Circulation, Joinery and Light

A house broken into blocks needs strong connections, and here the hallways do more than move people. Wide oak floorboards, plaster walls and shafts of afternoon sun make the corridors some of the most atmospheric spaces in the house. Timber sideboards, woven-fibre wardrobe doors and slatted screens are built into the walls so that circulation also serves as storage.

We would argue that the joinery is what holds the interior together. With each block separated by open air, the consistent timber detailing and textured plaster give the three volumes one shared material voice.

Upper Volumes and the Roof

Seen from the ground, the gaps between the blocks frame strips of sky, with vines strung across the openings between pink volumes. Only the central and rear blocks rise to a second floor, which keeps the front of the house low and lets light reach deeper into the lot.

A rooftop lawn with a round pink planter and a timber lattice screen faces the surrounding towers. It is a reminder of the density around the site and of how much the house is designed to turn inward, toward its own patios, rather than outward to the city.

Plans and Drawings

The ground floor plans show the whole argument at once. The garage sits at the street end, followed by courtyards and rooms in alternating sequence, ending with the pool at the rear. The upper floor plan is even clearer: three separate boxy volumes and a stair, set within the faint outline of the long lot, with nothing built over the patios between them.

Why This Project Matters

Narrow, deep plots are among the most common and least loved urban sites, in São Paulo and in many other cities. Casa Praça shows that the answer is not to fight the shape but to divide it. Separating the program into blocks and giving up floor area to patios produces a house where almost every room has light, air and a view of planting, and where privacy increases with distance from the street.

The project also reminds us that atmosphere often comes from restraint. Plaster, timber, stone, cobbles and one confident color carry the whole scheme. There is no structural acrobatics on display, only a disciplined plan and a material palette that reads well in strong sun. For architects working on tight infill sites, that combination is worth studying closely.

Praça House (Casa Praça) by Felipe Hess Arquitetos (design team: Felipe Hess, Pia Quagliato, Ana Falcão, Manuela Siffert), with landscape design by Flavia Tiraboschi Paisagismo. Jardim Paulistano, São Paulo, Brazil. Plot: 10 x 60 m. Completed 2023. Photography by Fran Parente.

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