Gil Mello Arquitetura Tilts a Single Roof Toward the Waterfalls on a Plateau Above Aiuruoca, Brazil

Sítio da Ponta Fina sits on a plateau on the slopes of the Serra do Papagaio, outside Aiuruoca in rural Minas Gerais. The plateau is the high point of the plot. It has fertile soil, water, and long views over the valley toward the waterfalls. Gil Mello Arquitetura studied the plot's axes and slopes before choosing where to build. The result is a main house of about 200 m² with a scatter of support, leisure, work and guest structures. The office designed it in phases between 2012 and 2015, and it was completed in 2020.

The interesting part is not the size or the program, which is modest: one bedroom, a social area and two verandas. It is how much work a single roof plane does. The roof rises toward the waterfalls and lets low winter afternoon sun into the house. It also produces two opposing verandas with very different ceiling heights. Add a timber palette sawn from demolition wood and old electricity poles cut to clear the access road, and you have a house that answers its site with a few precise decisions rather than many gestures.

Reading the Plateau Before Building on It

From the air, the strategy is clear. The buildings do not compete for the best spot. They spread across the clearing as a loose cluster of small tile-roofed volumes, ringed by forest. The main house is placed so the valley cannot see it, which matters more in rural Brazil than in many places. Privacy here comes from topography, not from walls.

The phased design, with the house and guest room first, then the sauna and garage, then the studio, paiol and storage room, reads in the plan of the site. It looks less like a masterplan and more like a homestead that grew around its water and its views. The round stone-rimmed pool and the ponds set between the cabins anchor that informality.

One Roof, Two Jobs

The steep clay-tile roof is the building's main idea. It sits on timber posts above a brick and glass enclosure, and it lifts on one side toward the waterfalls. That lift is not only about the view. It is set so winter afternoon sun reaches deep into the living space, a real comfort on a mountain plateau where evenings get cold.

We like that the roof keeps the familiar language of the region, terracotta tile and a pitched profile, while bending it to do something specific. At dusk, with the rafters lit from inside, the house reads as a lantern under a hat: simple in outline, carefully tuned in section.

Two Verandas Facing Opposite Directions

The verandas mirror each other. One is low, catches morning sun and looks over the valley. The other is very tall and opens toward the mountain range and more waterfalls. The same roof produces both: low where it drops, high where it climbs.

This gives the household two outdoor rooms for two times of day and two moods. You take breakfast in the compressed, sheltered one. You face the mountains in the lofty one. The outdoor kitchen on the flagstone patio, with its brick base and reclaimed plank wall, extends that life outside without needing another enclosed room.

A Village of Support Buildings

The smaller structures are deliberately plainer than the house. Vertical boards, low tiled roofs, yellow shutters and posts that lift the floors off the grass give them the look of farm outbuildings. That is a good call. They make the main house the clear protagonist, and they tie the site to the agricultural vocabulary of the Serra rather than to a resort aesthetic.

Their gabled ends and layered eaves change a lot with the light. Grey and weathered at noon, they turn warm and glowing in late afternoon. The materials are left to age in the open, and the project is better for it.

Reclaimed Timber and Local Hands

The main house was built entirely with local labor and local materials, plus recycled timber: demolition wood and old electricity poles. Trees that had to be cut to open the road were sawn on site to usable dimensions. The details show it. A twisted log serves as a porch post, and a brick entry volume meets board-and-batten cladding behind a rustic fence.

This is not salvage as decoration. Sourcing shaped the building, because the material on hand set the dimensions of what could be built. The bedroom, with its pine-clad walls and built-in teal cabinets, keeps the same rule at the most intimate scale, and the light filtering through its narrow windows does the rest.

The Hearth at the Center

Inside, a red fireplace volume organizes the living room. It stands between glazed timber doors, so the hearth always has a view of the deck and the hillside behind it. The house is highly transparent, and you can see through it from one landscape to the other, but the fireplace stops it from feeling like a pavilion with no center.

The red continues into the polished floor, giving the interior a warm base against the timber ceiling and the green outside. Sheepskins and orange cushions are styling, yes, but they also suit a house built to gather winter sun.

Kitchen and Table Under the Slope

Kitchen, dining and living share one volume under the sloped plank ceiling, with a long wooden table as the social spine. Rough timber posts stand in the room instead of hiding in walls. One of them frames the table against a window full of hills. Open shelving and red cabinetry keep the kitchen a working space rather than a showpiece.

The rising ceiling gives each zone a different height without partitions. You feel the section of the house as you move from the stove to the table to the sofa.

Plans and Drawings

The plan confirms the geometric clarity the photographs suggest. An angled central living space holds the bedroom, kitchen and bathroom at its edges, with a paved terrace on one side and a timber deck on the other. The section and elevations make the roof argument plain. A single steep plane rises over a raised floor. It stays low on the deck side, where the seated figures are, and climbs high above the opposite wall.

Why This Project Matters

Ponta Fina shows how far a small rural house can go on a handful of well-chosen moves. One roof orientation handles winter sun, the view to the waterfalls and the character of two verandas. One siting decision gives privacy from the valley. One sourcing rule, local labor plus timber reclaimed from poles, demolition and road clearing, sets both the budget and the look. None of this needs new technology, only patience with the site.

It is also a useful counterexample to the glass box dropped onto a mountaintop. Gil Mello's team keeps the regional pitched tile roof and the farm-cluster layout, then adjusts them with precision. For architects working on rural sites in Brazil and beyond, the lesson is to read the plot first and let the building stay modest enough that the landscape remains the main event.

Ponta Fina House, Aiuruoca, by Gil Mello Arquitetura (lead architect Gil Mello, with coordinators Fernanda Neiva and Julia Pinheiro for the main house and guest room). Location: Aiuruoca, Minas Gerais, Brazil. Area: 200 m². Year: 2020. Photography: Manuel Sá.

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