Nommo Arquitetos and Coti Arquitetura Float a White Box over a Timber Base on a Wedge-Shaped Curitiba Lot

Casa Luna sits at the end of a quiet residential street in Curitiba, where the city gives way to Atlantic Forest and araucaria trees. The house was designed by Nommo Arquitetos with Coti Arquitetura, who handled the interiors, and was completed in 2021. It covers 167 m², which is modest for a family home on the forest edge, and it occupies an awkward wedge-shaped plot that most developers would treat as leftover land.

What interests us is how the house deals with that plot. The architects compare the house to a satellite that reflects the light around it and contrasts quietly with the forest. In practice, that means a crisp white upper volume floating over a dark timber base, with every room on the ground floor opening to a small pool court. The street side is closed and graphic. The garden side is open and relaxed. Casa Luna works because it keeps those two roles apart.

A White Box Floating over Timber

From the street, the composition reads almost as a diagram: a pale rendered box held over a slatted timber base, a black metal gate, and a paved driveway. The upper volume cantilevers over the carport, so the car and the entry sit in shade under the mass of the bedrooms. One element does two jobs here. The overhang shelters the threshold and gives the house its most recognizable profile.

The palette is restrained to the point of severity: white, timber, black frames, grey concrete. Against a backdrop of foliage and overcast skies, this restraint is the point. The house doesn't try to blend into the forest. It sets up a clean figure that makes the surrounding green look denser by comparison, which is a fair reading of the satellite metaphor.

Square Windows in a Slatted Skin

The square, black-framed windows are the most disciplined detail on the exterior. Set into vertical timber cladding on the base and into white render above, they repeat across both materials and tie the two halves of the house together. Each one frames a specific view: a pool, a sofa, a person inside, the trees and the pylon beyond.

These are picture windows in the literal sense, and they give the house a domestic scale that the abstract massing could easily have lost. The garage with its parked dirt bike, sitting beside one of these openings, makes clear that this is a working family home and not only a formal exercise.

The Garden as the Real Living Room

Seen from the rear, the house shows its real logic. The white volume steps back, the timber base meets a deck, and a narrow lap pool runs along the lawn toward the forested hillside. The aerial view shows how tightly this is packed: house, deck, pool and grass share a small plot, and none of them feels squeezed.

The photographs are full of people reading, dogs on loungers and someone playing on the grass, and that seems deliberate. The outdoor space is where daily life happens. A power pylon and a red-leafed tree stay in frame, which we appreciate. The project doesn't pretend the edge of the city is untouched wilderness, even with araucarias overhead.

A Pavilion with a Planted Roof

A timber-clad pavilion with grasses on its roof sits by the pool and holds an open white kitchenette. When its sliding glass walls are pulled back, the pavilion becomes a covered extension of the deck rather than a separate room. Hanging plants and a bean bag in the afternoon sun show how informally the space is meant to be used.

The green roof matters more than it might seem. From the upper floors and the terrace, it replaces a hard surface with planting. On a lot this small, that helps the house read as part of the garden instead of covering it.

Walnut, Oak and Green Inside

Coti Arquitetura's interiors carry the exterior's discipline indoors and then warm it up. White cabinetry and a stone backsplash in the kitchen sit beside a walnut table and green leather chairs on copper legs. A walnut-lined door recess turns a basic opening into a small moment of craft.

The stair carries the interior. In one view it is an oak stair with angled treads; in another it rises past thin vertical balusters above a sofa with mustard cushions. Moss green turns up again in a vanity, a wall, the chairs and the outdoor loungers, which links inside and outside without making it look forced.

Private Rooms Lined in Timber

Upstairs, the white box holds the bedrooms. A narrow hallway is lined with walnut wardrobe doors and recessed pulls, so storage runs along the wall like continuous joinery rather than appearing as separate pieces of furniture. In a 167 m² house, using circulation for storage is simply efficient.

The bedroom keeps the same vocabulary: a walnut headboard, matching bedside drawers, and tall wardrobe doors. Afternoon sun falling on the white walls does most of the decorating. The approach is quiet and well judged, and it shows that the interior and architecture teams worked from the same playbook.

A Roof Terrace Toward the Araucarias

The top of the house is an open terrace with a potted olive tree, a planter running along the white parapet, and a glass balustrade facing the distant trees. It is the one place where the house looks out over the street and its neighbors instead of turning inward to the pool.

The top-down views explain the site strategy better than any elevation could. The pool, deck, planted pavilion roof and lawn fit together like pieces of a tight puzzle, and long tree shadows across the grass show how much of the setting's character comes from what lies beyond the boundary.

Plans and Drawings

The plans confirm what the photographs suggest. The lot is an irregular wedge, and the house fills it in three layers. The ground floor holds the living and dining volume, the stair, a gridded covered terrace, the deck and the pool. The upper floor is a compact trapezoid of bedrooms. A smaller attic level combines a stair core with an open terrace. Each floor gets smaller as it rises, which keeps the mass light at the top.

Section B is the most revealing drawing. It shows a double-height void, with the stair running along the tall wall, so the vertical circulation becomes the main spatial event of the interior. The axonometrics show the whole idea at once: a gridded gate on the narrow end, a courtyard with the pool, a planted-roof pavilion, and a skylit upper volume rising above it all.

Why This Project Matters

Brazilian cities are full of irregular, leftover lots at the ends of streets and along green edges. Casa Luna shows that these sites don't need to produce compromised houses. By stacking the program, closing the street front, and giving the whole ground floor to a pool court, Nommo Arquitetos and Coti Arquitetura get a family home with real outdoor life out of a plot most people would dismiss.

The project is also a useful lesson in contrast over camouflage. Instead of dressing a forest-edge house in rustic imagery, the architects set a clean white volume against the araucarias and let the timber, planting and interior colors connect it to its setting. The result is legible from the street and generous from the garden, and it never feels larger than its 167 m².

Casa Luna by Nommo Arquitetos and Coti Arquitetura (interior design). Design team: Anderson Luís de Almeida, Fernanda Taube Linero and Julio Cesar Barros da Silva. Construction: Ligare Construtora. Location: Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil. Area: 167 m². Year: 2021. Photography: Mahani Siqueira.

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