Gutter House its a project of two two paired beach beach houses separated by a 22m concrete gutter in Sagi, a roof  fisherman’s village in the northeast of Brazil.

  The volume of the house is inserted in the landscape by rising  two amphibious waves of wood  separated by a gutter that conducts the water irrigating the green façade with plants that provides sun protection.

  For centuries, the ships of the Portuguese Empire have sailed those waters swayed by the winds that they used to trade, fishing and building cities and settlements.

    Curiously, the anonymous architects who had the knowledge to erect the baroque cathedrals of those cities were the shipbuilders. With their constructive knowledge of wood, transmitted for generations, they achieved great fame and prestige and erected the cathedrals of cities as important as the nearby Olinda ,with its wooden structure crowned by majestic baroque domes.

  The colors, inspired by the sea tons, are chosen to dialogue with the colors of the boats and the houses of the native residents , made out of wood and painted colorfully as a protection from the Sun

  The project, many centuries later, wants to poetically honor the memory of those architect and sailors and evoke the sensuality of the landscape and the mystery of the Ocean with its silent naval geometry.  

Client wanted a house that could easily be splitted in two or function as a house-studio to work home office surrounded by the beach.

The volumetry tries to be contained in height in order to dialogue with the existing original houses.

Structurally the house is built as an inverted ship, with a succession of structural elements of Gue laminated timber ribs fixed to a concrete gutter always visible inside the house.

   The interior, conformed by a mantle of curved wooden and bamboo beams, evokes naval interiors with sculpted pillars like masts, circular windows, fishing scales pattern flooring and low impact materials from inner areas are used like wood, bamboo, clay,stone

The volume intends to insert itself silently into the landscape with minimal ecological impact: A double façade on both fronts is designed to ensure sun protection and an innovative constructive solution is designed for the roof : a double layered package  of steel curved sheets with isolation with a ventilated space and wood tiles finishing.

Gutter House is a project that has been built by the author with native people from the village, using low impact materials from inner places (20-30km) in order to employ local people and  create circular economy. The architect lived one year in the remote village building a respect with the community and making the construction site a laboratory workshop. 

Colors, plants, naval references and a contained scale are elements that creates a dialogue with existing community ,instead of rising the scale providing views on the upper floor and increasing real state value.

Sustainable passive design decisions are done in an intention to give more with less: More comfort and more beauty with less energy, resources and gas emissions, looking for highly efficient solutions with pragmatic intelligence to subscribe to the famous THINK GLOBAL,ACT LOCAL.

The construction is designed with double layered façade, double layered  roof, openings with different orientation to provide cross ventilation , water  re-use, permeable floors , septic tank treatment, and  the intention of building a  beach  border with an horizontal bench to look and  participate into the village public and democratic space which is the Beach, avoiding high  protection walls that in the name of security,  break the public relation between public community space and the private space.

Interior flooring is made of site clay and exterior is totally permeable of stones placed with a sea-wave pattern