On a waterfront site in Delfinópolis in Brazil’s Minas Gerais, this expansive contemporary house uses the luxury of space to create a refined architectural experience. Designed by Filipi and Mariana Oliveira and their team at MF+Arquitetos, Casa Celeiro (Barn House) covers some 1,108 m², arranged as two forms set at right angles in the landscape on the shores of a large reservoir.
The simple lines of the upper volume is what gives the house its name. A long, single-storey pitched timber roof structure that runs north-south, it is flanked on all sides by covered verandas. Formed from glue laminated timber frames, the roof structure oversails the built-up area to create the verandas, providing solar shading as well as access to a steel-clad inner core of five ensuite bedrooms, culminating in a principal between suite at the northern end, complete with two walls of sliding glazing that can be opened up to the landscape beyond.
In the centre of the barn element is a grand living room, the only point at which the internal spaces open up to the full height of the pitched roof. The verandas are used for circulation and incorporate glazed and louvred panels that be swung open as required. On the other side is a small kitchen, gym and utility spaces, as well as a generously sized covered terrace.
This space also houses a grand staircase that descends towards the water to the east, leading to the lower level. Half sunk into the hillside, this is the location of the main kitchen and living room, with three sliding glass walls opening onto a pool terrace with the reservoir beyond. The house is therefore divided between public and private, with each component having its own relationship with the landscape and horizon.
On the lower, more public, level, there’s very little perception of the accommodation structure above it. Likewise, when looking out east across the reservoir, the flat concrete roof of the semi-sunken lower level is planted to make it all but invisible. Aside from the internal staircase, one key physical element unites the two components, a cascade of rough-hewn steps that leads down from the upper terrace into the heart of lower pavilion, flanked by mature planting.
‘Rather than an abrupt connection, this route proposes a gradual transition between architecture and nature,’ the architects explain, ‘For a few moments, the building partially disappears, and movement is guided instead by stone, topography, and vegetation.’ It’s a rare of incursion for nature in a house that prides itself of simplicity and grand structural gestures. The lower level also a sauna and changing areas for the outdoor pool, alongside storage and a wine cellar in the more sheltered, cooler subterranean section.
The architects point to the house’s inherent contradictions – barn-like in form but not in execution, with many layers gradually revealed from within. The monolithic wooden form gives way to multiple materials and textures, as steel, concrete, stone, vegetation, light, and water are brought together under one roof.
‘Casa Celeiro … is simultaneously shelter and openness, form and void, permanence and transformation. The memory of the barn remains present in its most elemental form, while the architecture reinterprets it in response to a different way of living - one that is more open to the climate, to movement, and to the constant presence of the landscape.’
