FGMF Perches a Concrete-Finned House and a Semi-Suspended Pool atop a Sloping São Paulo Corner Lot

The Aroeira House sits in a gated community at Quinta da Baronesa, in Bragança Paulista, in the countryside of São Paulo state. The site is a steep corner lot with streets on two sides and farmland opening out beyond. FGMF, led by Fernando Forte, Lourenço Gimenes and Rodrigo Marcondes Ferraz, placed a house of just over 1,000 m² on the upper part of the slope. They treated the gradient as the starting point of the design rather than a problem to be graded away. The result is two long, linear floors, with a large pool pushed out over the hillside on staggered terraces.

What makes the project worth your attention is how much work the concrete frame does. Round columns and tall, slender board-formed walls hold up the upper floor. The same walls divide the suites, set the rhythm of the facade and frame the views. In many high-end Brazilian houses, structure hides behind a finish. Here, FGMF makes it the main architectural statement, and the glazing reads as the gaps the frame leaves open.

Claiming the Crest of a Corner Lot

From the curving road below, the house shows itself as a long horizontal line on a grassy mound. Large trees and young orchard plantings frame it. The siting comes from a close reading of the lot. The house is pulled up to where the view is best, which leaves the lower slope free for landscape and for the drive to the garage.

The corner condition is resolved neatly. Pedestrians arrive on the level from the side street, while cars come in from the lower street. As a result, the arrival sequence never fights the topography. The two streets serve two different ways of entering, and the house does not need ramps or a grand stair to reconcile them.

Concrete Fins as Structure and Facade

The angled board-formed walls are the project's signature. On the main elevation they appear as a row of fins, staggered in plan. They turn the long glazed band into a sequence of framed bays rather than a single sheet of glass. The board marks give the concrete a grain that sits well beside the timber window frames, and in low sun the fins cast shadows that shift through the day.

We like that the fins are not decoration attached to a box. They are the walls that carry the upper floor and separate the private rooms. That is why their spacing feels inevitable rather than arbitrary. The slim round columns underneath read as a lighter counterpoint, and the upper volume seems to rest on very little.

Entrance, Stone and the Upper Rooms

The street side is more guarded. A timber door sits beneath cantilevered slabs, next to a brown rendered wall and a wing clad in horizontal stone. Stepped stone volumes project over the glazed ground floor and cast long diagonal shadows. This is the closed face of the house, and the change in material from concrete to stone tells you that you are on the private side.

Inside the upper floor, the palette stays restrained: grey stone walls, wide timber planks and timber-framed glazing that looks onto lawn. The architects aimed to use materials in their natural state, and the rooms bear this out. Nothing competes with the landscape, and the frame of each window does most of the composing.

The Covered Veranda as the Real Living Room

The ground floor holds the social program, and its most convincing space is the covered veranda beneath the upper floor. Round columns stand free, textured concrete walls give enclosure on one side, and the other side opens straight onto the pool edge and the hills. Because the upper floor carries its own load on the fin walls, the plan below stays open.

This is a familiar Brazilian modernist type, the shaded threshold between house and garden, done with real discipline. The service areas are pushed to the rear and away from the views, so nothing utilitarian intrudes on the veranda. In evening light the stacked fins overhead turn into a ribbed ceiling of shadow.

A Pool Held Above the Slope

The external floors are arranged as staggered horizontal planes. Working with landscape architect Rodrigo Oliveira Paisagismo, FGMF uses these planes to define the entrance, a reflecting pool, verandas and terraces. The large pool is semi-suspended at the edge of these platforms and projects over the grassed slope. From above, its square outline reads as one more terrace that happens to hold water.

The aerial views also show planted bands on the low roofs, which help the house blend into the garden when seen from higher ground. Stone and wood carry from inside to outside and into the pool surround. Because of this continuity, the terraces feel like an extension of the floor plates rather than a separate landscape layer.

The House After Dark

At dusk the roles flip. The timber-framed windows glow between the fins, and the concrete becomes a dark silhouette over the slope. The lighting design by Foco LD keeps the effect controlled. You see the frame as a sequence of lit bays on the hilltop, which is the clearest picture of the architectural idea: solid structure, framed transparency.

Plans and Drawings

The site plan shows how thin and elongated the house is, laid along the contour with the pool, garden trees and a small pond around it. The lower floor plan gathers the garage, kitchen, living areas, guest suites and water mirror around the covered veranda. The upper plan is a narrow bar of bedrooms, a principal suite and a living room.

The section makes the whole strategy readable at once. The upper volume cantilevers over the ground-floor rooms, while the pool steps down the slope at the far end. The site falls away, and the house answers with horizontal layers instead of cutting into the hill.

Why This Project Matters

Large private houses in gated communities often default to bulk: too many materials and too many gestures. FGMF shows a different route. When a structural system is legible and well proportioned, it can organize the plan, shape the facade and set the material palette all at once. The fin walls carry, divide and frame, so the house needs very little else to be expressive.

The project is also a useful lesson in reading a site before drawing on it. The steep corner lot gives two kinds of access, a commanding crest and a slope that the terraces and pool can step down. FGMF uses every one of those conditions rather than flattening them. For you as a designer, the takeaway is simple and transferable: let the topography and the structure do the heavy lifting, and add finishes only where they earn their place.

Aroeira House by FGMF (Fernando Forte, Lourenço Gimenes, Rodrigo Marcondes Ferraz), Quinta da Baronesa, Bragança Paulista, Brazil. Area: 1,025 m². Completed: 2024. Structural engineering: Benedicts. General contractor: Yellowbrick Houses. Landscape: Rodrigo Oliveira Paisagismo. Lighting: Foco LD. Photography: Fran Parente.

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