Obra Arquitetos Stacks Wood Over Masonry to Build a Beach House That Breathes in Ubatuba

A beach house should do two things well: let air and light flood in when you want them, and close down to something private when you don't. Obra Arquitetos, led by João Paulo Daolio, took that duality as the primary generator for Renzo House, a 205 square meter residence in Ubatuba on São Paulo's northern coast. Rather than treating the typical open plan as a default, the practice split the program across staggered levels, producing rooms with distinct ceiling heights, unexpected sightlines, and varying degrees of exposure to the street and garden.

What makes the project worth studying is its structural honesty. The lower half of the house is load-bearing masonry with prefabricated panel slabs, a system chosen because it could be executed by local labor without specialist trades. Sitting on top of that masonry plinth is a timber frame joined with exposed steel connectors, covering the entire footprint like a second building placed on top of the first. The two systems read clearly: white painted block below, wood and corrugated metal above. That legibility is the project's real argument. In a market saturated with seamless concrete shells, Obra Arquitetos built a house that shows you exactly how it stands up.

A Timber Crown on a Masonry Base

From the garden, the structural logic is immediately legible. White masonry walls rise to roughly door height, then pitched timber rafters and corrugated metal cladding take over. Stone paving and planting beds soften the transition between building and ground, while a metal ladder fixed to one wall hints at the maintenance access built into the design rather than hidden from it. The courtyard side reveals how the sloping roof channels rainwater away from the living spaces while admitting dappled light through the surrounding tree canopy.

The choice to keep the masonry white and the timber natural creates a temperature gradient you can read from a distance: the heavy, cool base anchors the house to its site, and the lighter wood structure above captures breezes at roof level. It is a simple diagram, but it works because Obra Arquitetos committed to it completely rather than hedging with hybrid cladding.

Blue Volumes and Dusk Presence

The most striking exterior moments arrive at dusk, when the blue-painted timber volumes glow against palm silhouettes and a darkening sky. That blue, applied to shutters, columns, and an entire clad volume with a glazed upper section, is not decorative whimsy. It serves as a color code that distinguishes operable elements from fixed structure. Where you see blue, something opens, pivots, or slides. The result is a facade that telegraphs its own flexibility before you touch anything.

The covered walkway leading to the blue-shuttered facade reinforces a procession that feels more like a rural veranda than a conventional entry sequence. Exposed timber rafters overhead and terracotta-toned flooring underfoot pull the exterior palette into the threshold zone, so the boundary between inside and outside dissolves gradually rather than at a single door frame.

Pivoting Panels and Climate Control

Ubatuba's coastal climate demands ventilation that is abundant by default and controllable when the temperature drops. Obra Arquitetos addressed this with pivoting wooden panels positioned throughout the house. When open, they establish a direct relationship with the street and garden; when closed, they seal the envelope to a comfortable degree without killing airflow entirely. The continuous terracotta flooring visible from the half-height masonry walls through to the exterior terrace makes the open configuration feel like one vast covered patio.

The living area illustrates the strategy at room scale. A long timber table anchors the space, built-in seating lines the perimeter, and the blue partition panels can subdivide the room or fold away entirely. Timber-framed glazing on the garden side provides uninterrupted views while the solid masonry wall opposite offers thermal mass and privacy. It is a living room that can be four different rooms depending on the weather and the number of people at dinner.

Vertical Surprise: The Sleeping Loft

The most spatially generous moment in the house is the double-height volume beneath exposed timber rafters, where a sleeping loft tucks under skylights. White painted masonry walls amplify daylight while the wood structure above absorbs it, creating a tonal gradient from bright below to warm above. The loft is not a leftover attic space; it is the payoff of the staggered-level strategy, giving a compact 205 square meter house the volumetric drama of something much larger.

Downstairs, a thick white masonry chimney core acts as the spatial anchor, with a timber stair wrapping alongside it and a built-in sofa pressed against its base. Steel connectors are left exposed at every beam-to-column joint, turning the ceiling into a readable diagram of forces. The fireplace core also works as a thermal battery, absorbing heat during the day and radiating it back on cooler evenings, which matters more than you might expect on a subtropical coast where winter nights can surprise visitors.

Why This Project Matters

Renzo House matters because it treats construction legibility as an aesthetic position. In a design culture that often prizes smooth, continuous skins, Obra Arquitetos let the joint between masonry and timber define the building's identity. Every steel connector, every blue-painted shutter, every shift in floor level communicates a decision about how the house is made, how it ventilates, and how it can be reconfigured. The result is a beach house that teaches you to live in it simply by showing you how it was built.

The project also demonstrates that simple local labor and straightforward materials, structural masonry, prefab slabs, regionally sourced timber, can produce architecture with genuine spatial complexity. You do not need a specialist contractor or an exotic material palette to achieve layered interiors, unexpected views, and a facade that changes character with the time of day. You need a clear structural idea and the discipline to follow it through every detail. Obra Arquitetos had both.

Renzo House by Obra Arquitetos, Ubatuba, São Paulo, Brazil. 205 m² (2,207 ft²). Completed 2023. Photography by Nelson Kon.

About the Studio

Share Your Own Work on uni.xyz

If projects like this are the kind of work you want to make, uni.xyz is a place to publish your own, find collaborators, and enter design competitions.