built as an inverted ship, ‘gutter house’ by daniel florez honors brazil’s past sailor-architects

‘gutter house’ by atelier daniel florez

Atelier Daniel Florez presents ‘Gutter House’, a communal residence designed as a twin set of beach houses for two friends. Set in the fishing village of Sagi in Northeastern Brazil, the closest South American continental point from Europe, the residential project takes shape in a historic site where, for centuries, ships of the Portuguese Empire have sailed its waters for trading, 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,’ writes Florez. 

evoking the memory of sailor-architects + oceanic nature

Many centuries later, Atelier Daniel Florez (see more here) built the ‘Gutter House’ as a poetic tribute to the memory of those past architects and sailors. Nestled into its suburban context of ceramic tiled buildings, the residence is, conceptually, built as an inverted ship with an undulating roof structure drawn like two ‘waves’ of wood. These wavy surfaces are clad in a series of laminated wood ‘ribs’, fixed to a concrete gutter that is always visible inside the house.

While paying tribute to past settlers, the structure’s undulating outline also evokes the region’s sensual dunescape and the ocean’s ‘silent geometry’, as the architect describes it. ‘These undulations, while dialoguing with the dunes of the landscape, pour the water from the roof into a 22m-long concrete gutter covered in blue ceramic tiles that conduct the water to irrigate the plants on the rear façade creating a green protection against the strong sun of the evening,’ continues Florez. 

a naval-inspired design with minimal ecological impact

Moving to the interiors of the twin beach houses, the spaces are characterized by a mantle of curved wooden and bamboo beams, evoking naval interiors with great sensuality and — together with the sculpted pillars like masts, the circular windows, the flooring fishing scales patterns, and the blue colors — honor the craft and knowledge of those ancient and heroic sailor-architects. With a double façade on both fronts and a double roof finished with wooden tiles, the project intends to insert itself silently into the landscape with minimal ecological impact.

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project info:

name: Gutter House 

location: Sagi, Brazil 

construction year: 2021

architecture + general contracting: Atelier Daniel Florez | @atelierdanielflorez

team: Daniel Florez, Luis F.Inglada, Stefan Kiellman, Wendy Cruz

GLT: Rewood 

structural engineer: Marcio Medeiros – Enecol 

MEP engineer: Sergio Cardoso Dantas