Márcio Flávio Motta Threads Timber Bridges Through a Steel-Framed Courtyard House in Juiz de Fora

Juiz de Fora sits in the hills of Minas Gerais. Its so-called upper city reaches about 900 meters, and at that height the tropical climate is cooled by elevation. Aunt Val's House, completed in 2025 by Márcio Flávio Motta in the Martelos neighborhood, occupies a sloping urban lot there. The house covers 400 m², and its construction is plain to see: a slim steel frame, glass infill, and a layer of timber slats and woven panels hung over it like clothing.

What interests us is less the frame and more what the frame leaves open. The house does not sit as one volume on a lawn. It splits around a planted courtyard and stitches its parts back together with timber-decked footbridges. Movement through the house becomes a walk through the garden in the air. Few private houses treat circulation as their main event, and this one does.

Entering at the Top of the Slope

From the street, the house is barely there. You see a thin flat roof on steel columns, horizontal bar screens, and a water tank set on top without any attempt to hide it. A cobblestone path leads under the roof to an open carport. The first impression is of a pavilion, not a facade, and that restraint suits a dense hillside neighborhood.

The plans explain the arrival. Parking and bedrooms sit on the upper level, level with the street, while living spaces drop below with the slope. Up close, the details stay frank: an exposed I-section column, a timber-clad soffit, a wood door. Nothing is boxed in. The structure is the finish.

A Courtyard Threaded with Bridges

The courtyard does the most work in this project. Monstera, spiky palms and stepping stones fill the space below, while steel-railed timber bridges cross between glazed rooms overhead. To get from one part of the house to another, you step outside, over the plants, under the sky. It is a deliberate inconvenience, and in this climate a reasonable one.

At dusk the logic reverses. The beams and columns crossing the courtyard become dark lines against warm interior light, and the rooftop tanks stand out against the evening sky. The house reads as scaffolding holding rooms, and that frankness gives it a calm we rarely see in houses of this size.

Screens That Move with the Day

The garden facade changes with how it is used. In some views the bamboo and timber slat screens are raised, exposing the glazed living level. In others they are lowered, and the upper volume closes into a striped lantern. Comparing the dusk shots, the same elevation looks like two different buildings.

This is the right instinct for highland tropical weather, where the same afternoon can bring hard sun and cool wind. Operable screens let the residents adjust shade and privacy by hand, a more responsive tool than any fixed brise-soleil. On the side terrace, the slatted volume above shades a deck with loungers, so the screen works for the outdoor rooms too.

A Canopy Cut Loose from the Frame

The boldest move is the woven, slatted canopy that tilts out from the steel frame and cantilevers past the deck. Seen from below, it filters the light into stripes over the lawn and stone wall. Seen from across the garden, it gives the flat-roofed box a brim, a slightly off-axis gesture that breaks the rectilinear grid.

The canopy also tells you what the architecture is for. A tilted, porous roof over a terrace is a shade device first and an image second, and the house is better for keeping that order. At blue hour, lit from within, the full-width view shows how thin the whole construction is: frame, glass, canopy, very little else.

Living Below the Garden Line

Inside, the courtyard becomes the view. Floor-to-ceiling glass in the living room frames the planting and the walkway above it, with white curtains as the only softening layer. Looking up from the courtyard, a concrete panel wall and a white daybed behind glass show how the private rooms open onto this shared outdoor core.

Upstairs, the palette holds: timber floors, concrete panel walls, steel ceiling beams left exposed, track lights. Low sun passing through the louvered screens throws patterns across the floor, so the facade system shows up again inside as moving light. The interiors are sparse, and they can be, because the courtyard does the decorating.

Plans and Drawings

The plans make the split section clear. The lower floor holds the kitchen, living area and a service block, with stepping-stone paths across the sloping lot. The upper floor holds bedrooms, bathrooms and two-car parking, tied together by timber walkways that wrap the planted garden. One section shows a sloping ramp crossing both glazed floors beside a timber-clad core, which suggests circulation was designed as a continuous route rather than a stair tucked into a corner.

The elevations show how the house meets the hill: steel frame set into the slope, exterior stairs at the edges, and a roof tower holding the water supply. The west elevation puts the slatted screen across the full upper floor. It is the defining surface of the house, and the drawing treats it that way.

Why This Project Matters

Brazilian modernism has a long tradition of lightweight houses that open to the garden, and Aunt Val's House belongs to it without simply copying it. The steel frame, the exposed water tanks and the raw panels are familiar. The difference is the bridge network over the courtyard, which makes moving between rooms the main spatial experience. Most houses of 400 m² spend that area on rooms. This one spends a good share of it on the walk between them.

For architects working on sloping urban lots in warm upland climates, the lesson is practical. Put arrival where the street is, let living spaces drop with the ground, and keep an open, planted void at the center. Then give residents operable screens instead of fixed shading. The house shows that a modest kit of frame, slat and glass can still produce a rich daily experience when the section, not the facade, drives the design.

Aunt Val's House (Casa da Tia Val) by Márcio Flávio Motta, with project team Arqliq, Lucca Brigatto and Bernardo Barcellos. Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Brazil. 400 m². Completed 2025. Photography by André Miguel Coronha.

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