RESIDÊNCIA MILAN by MARCOS ACAYABA
An iconic modernist house with a creative take on environmental comfort
Cidade Jardim is an exclusive residential neighborhood of the bursting city of São Paulo where architect Marcos Acayaba’s family home is quietly settled in the middle of that exuberant tropical environment so emblematic of Brazil.
“This is a project I initially designed for my sister-in-law but she moved to Paris before the end of the construction so my wife and I ended up moving in. This is the house where our daughters grew up and where we’ve been living as a family for the past fifty years”, says Marcos Acayaba, one of the most revered contemporary architects in Brazil who will be turning 80 years old next August. Considered his official inaugural project, he was only 28 years old in 1972 when he built this 800m2 radical structure after gaining experience with ten previous smaller residential projects (his uncle’s holiday home on the coastal town of Peruíbe being pivotal to his original practice).
At Residência Milan, Acayaba integrated an ingenious ‘bioclimatic airflow circuit’ based on physical mechanisms to ensure optimum natural ventilation of the internal space and allow that indoor microclimate: fresh air gets inside the house through air vent installed underneath the kitchen’s countertop on the lower level of the house but also underneath each one of the bedrooms’ long bay windows on the highest platform.
“This house has been such an amazing and fulfilling family experience. I think it has been good for my daughters to live in this free, unbarred space, where they could actually see their father and mother working” observes Acayaba.
