Porto Segura, Brazil Residence by Studio MK27: 2019 Best of Year Winner for Beach House

Little can compete with the natural beauty of northeast Brazil’s Itapororoca Beach and its surrounding rain forest. For an 8,800-square-foot residence just off the Atlantic Ocean coast, Studio MK27 founder Marcio Kogan was smart enough to not even try. “The house abandons any reference to the dwelling machine of the modernist evocation,” Kogan says. “It offers itself as a sensorial project in which nature, light, shadows, and the constant and infinite of the ocean become the fundamental materials.”

Other materials include eucalyptus, which forms a pergola supported by 14 frames and encloses five volumes. They house a kitchen, dining and living rooms, and master and guest bedrooms, each flowing into the next without the need for corridors. Concrete and stone serve as flooring and countertops; wood returns to frame doorways. A pool sits to one side of the house, a man-made iteration of the sea, but nearby nature asserts itself as the greatest collaborator: Growing through the deck and openings in the pergola, tropical vegetation sprouts to offer dappled shade across the entire residence.

Project Team: Marcio Tanaka; Beatriz Meyer; Diana Radomysler; Serge Cajfinger; Pedro Ribeiro; Carlos Costa; Laura Guedes; Mariana Simas; Oswaldo Pessano.

> See more from the December/January 2020 issue of Interior Design