Janaína Araújo Wraps a 65-Square-Meter Retreat in Corten Steel and Demolition Wood

There is a genre of design exhibition space that performs nature without actually confronting it. Studio NaMata, built for the CASACOR Minas Gerais show by Janaína Araújo Arquitetura e Interiores, does the opposite. Set in the Mangabeiras neighborhood of Belo Horizonte, this 65 m² cabin was conceived around the trees already standing on site, not despite them. Every trunk was surveyed, every canopy factored into the plan. The architecture bends to the landscape rather than demanding the landscape bend to it.

What makes the project genuinely interesting is its material logic. Perforated Corten steel louvers, reclaimed demolition wood, burnt cement, and textured concrete block do not merely evoke rusticity; they age in concert with the vegetation. The cabin is designed to patina, to collect moss, to blur into the hillside over time. The result is a two-story retreat that feels less like an object placed in nature and more like a clearing that grew a roof.

A Skin That Breathes

The defining gesture of Studio NaMata is its perforated Corten steel envelope. These weathered panels wrap the building on multiple faces, acting simultaneously as sun shading, privacy screen, and ornamental surface. Sunlight punches through the perforations to cast a shifting dot matrix of shadow across floors and walls, transforming the interior atmosphere hour by hour. The effect is kinetic without any moving parts.

Crucially, the screens are operable. Panels slide and pivot to open the bedroom directly to the courtyard or seal it for privacy. A large circular window on the upper volume punctuates the otherwise rectilinear language with a single bold aperture, framing the canopy like a lens. The interplay between the heavy, oxidized steel and the delicate lace of light it produces is the project's best trick.

Building Around the Trees

The plan reads as a negotiation between built volume and existing vegetation. Mature trees penetrate courtyards, overhang roofs, and push branches through gaps in the pergola. Landscape designer Nana Guimarães layered native undergrowth and tropical planting beneath the canopy, reinforcing the sense that the cabin is a guest on someone else's land.

An interior courtyard anchored by a large tree and ceramic vessels serves as the spatial hinge of the plan. It separates the social wing from the private quarters while pulling daylight deep into the footprint. Concrete pavers and stone block columns ground the courtyard materially, contrasting with the airiness of the glass walls that border it. The covered dining terrace, shaded by branches rather than a solid roof, extends this strategy: structure provides the frame, nature provides the shelter.

Living Without Walls

Inside, the 65 m² floor area is treated as a single integrated volume. Kitchen, dining, and living are not segregated into rooms but flow into one another around a timber-clad ceiling of reclaimed demolition wood. Open shelving in the kitchen nook replaces upper cabinets, reinforcing the visual continuity. A perforated metal screen behind the shelves lets borrowed light filter through, so even the most utilitarian zone participates in the cabin's play of transparency.

The bedroom occupies the quieter end of the plan, anchored by a timber platform bed positioned beneath the circular window. Morning sunlight enters at a low angle and fills the room without glare. Floor-to-ceiling glazing on the opposite wall opens to a bamboo garden, giving the compact sleeping area a sense of expansion that its square footage alone could never provide.

Water, Stone, and Open Air

The bathing sequence is where Studio NaMata is at its most provocative. A sunken courtyard pool sits beneath a timber ceiling and perforated bronze screen, its water surface reflecting the branches of an overhanging tree. This is not a conventional bathroom tucked behind a closed door; it is an outdoor room that treats bathing as a ritual of exposure to the elements.

An outdoor shower with a white basin sits beside a grey tile wall and vertical slat screen among tropical plants. Inside, the bathroom itself features a glass-enclosed shower opening directly to a planted courtyard, and a vanity with a vessel sink set against cream tile and timber shelves. The progression from enclosed interior to semi-covered terrace to fully open sky is deliberate: Araújo treats water as a connector between architecture and landscape, not something to be hidden behind ceramic tile.

Arrival and Threshold

The entrance sets the tone immediately. A timber pergola supported on weathered steel columns frames a planted bed of spiky yuccas in white gravel. The palette is established before you step inside: oxidized metal, raw wood, stone, and drought-tolerant planting. There is no foyer, no transitional hallway. You move from gravel to interior in a single step, reinforcing the cabin's thesis that inside and outside are not distinct categories.

Plans and Drawings

The floor plan reveals just how efficiently the 65 m² are distributed. The open living area with kitchen occupies roughly half the footprint, with the bathroom suite and planted courtyard spaces wrapping around the edges. Elevation drawings show the low pavilion profile, its block walls and sliding panels deliberately held below the tree canopy line. Sections confirm the flat roof strategy: the building stays as close to the ground as possible, ceding vertical dominance to the surrounding vegetation.

Why This Project Matters

Studio NaMata is a corrective to the tendency to treat show homes as hermetic set pieces. By preserving every pre-existing tree and letting them dictate the plan, Janaína Araújo produced a cabin that is specific to its plot in a way that cannot be replicated elsewhere. The material palette of Corten steel, demolition wood, and burnt cement will continue to weather and change, meaning the project's appearance a decade from now will be different from, and arguably richer than, what we see today.

At 65 m², the cabin also makes a quiet argument about sufficiency. You do not need more space when every surface is working: walls filter light, ceilings reflect the garden, and screens can be opened to double the living area in seconds. The integration of bathing rituals with landscape, the refusal to separate kitchen from living room, and the insistence on operable enclosures all point toward a Brazilian residential architecture that privileges experience over square meters. That is a lesson worth exporting.

Studio NaMata by Janaína Araújo Arquitetura e Interiores, with landscape design by Nana Guimarães. Located in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. 65 m². Completed in 2022. Photography by Henrique Queiroga, Estúdio NY18.

About the Studio

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