Studio Andre Lenza Shrinks a Family Home into a Single-Storey Goiânia House Behind Timber Screens

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This article covers topics related to Residential Building, Architecture. A couple's move to a smaller home in eastern Goiânia becomes a single-storey concrete house wrapped in timber screens, around a plunge pool and garden.

A couple's move to a smaller home in eastern Goiânia becomes a single-storey concrete house wrapped in timber screens, around a plunge pool and garden.

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UNI Editorial published Blog under Residential Building, Architecture on Oct 11, 2026

Most residential briefs ask for more: more rooms, more storage, more square meters. The Jabuticabeiras House by Studio Andre Lenza starts from the opposite request. The clients are a couple whose children have left home, and whose previous house had become too large for the life they now lead. They bought a 650 m² lot in the eastern region of Goiânia, in the same neighborhood as their children and grandchildren, and asked for something smaller and closer to family.

Downsizing is easy to describe and harder to design well. A smaller house can feel like a demotion or like a deliberate edit. What interests us here is how Andre Lenza, with Wilney Filho, Ingrid Moreira and Gabriela Lys, and landscape architect Fernanda Simão, make the reduction legible as a choice. They put one living floor on a sloping site, push the cars and storage below grade, and give a large share of the lot back to garden and water. The architects give the residence as 361 m². The house is not tiny, but it is organized so that nothing feels left over.

A Street Face Built from Screens

Street facade of a low concrete-framed house with timber slat panels, palms and a young tree under a clear blue sky

Street-side facade of rust-toned timber slats and a concrete roof edge, with a cyclist passing on the path under clear blue sky

Facade of vertical timber screens behind slim palms and two boulders on a lawn under a clear blue sky

From the street, the house reads as a low concrete frame filled with rust-toned timber slats. There is no showpiece entrance and no large window aimed at passersby. The slats set up a layer of semi-privacy that suits a couple living in a dense residential neighborhood: light and air pass through, but sight lines are filtered.

The palms, the young tree and the two boulders on the lawn do as much work as the architecture. They break up the frontage and keep the long horizontal of the roof edge from feeling severe. The cyclist in one frame is a useful reminder of scale. This is a house that sits politely on an ordinary street rather than announcing itself to it.

About the Studio

STUDIO ANDRE LENZA

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