Brazilian architect Marcio Kogan and his architecture firm Studio MK27 have designed the BR House project.
This contemporary two story home is located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The property of the Casa BR made it possible to create something special and important to the project: the house is approached at ground level while the entrance is actually located above the stilts on the second floor, where everything takes place (the lower floor is used as the service and bathing areas). The foreseeable ritual defined by going up a staircase is substituted by another, that of gaining entrance to the house via a walkway located over a fine thread of water and arriving at a wooden deck. This construction has a fundamental architectural purpose: it precedes (already having been built) the interior. Another possible conceptual approach with the “Casa de Vidro” could be made with relation to the treatment given to the bedroom and living room areas. In both houses, the living room is treated in such a way that the visual barriers between the interior and exterior be reduced to the maximum, while the treatment for the façades of the bedrooms demonstrate the discretion necessary for an intimate area. At night the relation between the interior and exterior of Casa BR acquires a new proposition. As night falls over the rain forest and the trees disappear into the darkness, the house functions as a flashlight. The interior light, filtered through the percolation of the bedrooms or refracted through the glass of the living room, illuminates the immediate surroundings, making the architecture, once again, present as both shelter and poetic expression.
