CUBE HOUSE GARDEN
São Paulo, Brazil
by Isabel Duprat
The house designed by Marcio Kogan is a block of raw, dry concrete, exactly as it intended to be. A monolith, as they called it. I thought that, while the garden should wildly trespass the architecture as a counterpoint of the rebellious organicity to the simplicity, it would also be necessary to breathe in the space that was destined for it, surrounded by buildings which were close to a very narrow street, and totally empty, except for two Ficus benjamina along the street.
A 25x3 m swimming pool lane, a requirement of the client, determined the spatiality of the garden, since there was only one possible location to meet these dimensions, alternatives limited by the subsoil and its openings. In urban gardens, with rare exceptions, the choice of the swimming pool location, especially if it has the function of swimming, is not the ideal sunlit place most of the times. The pool is placed where it fits and sunlight may only occur during certain seasons or throughout the entire day. Added to that, there are the boundary walls, high gables and the neighboring buildings that already cast their shad, and then there is someone else’s windows facing the plot creating the need to mitigate these inconveniences without making a two-dimensional hedge or a scenic vertical garden. Choices must be made. How to make a garden with its nuances of types of vegetation in their different sizes and structures and colors, give scale and temporality to the architecture, enjoy the cycle of each plant, creating a “place” from an empty space? How to create a welcoming, protecting, interacting place while meeting so many requirements? I always choose the “good place”, even at the expense of other aspects, because this is what we need.
I placed the pool on the north side at 1.5 m from the boundary, a width that I considered minimal to dilute the tall gable of the neighboring house, which overlooked the place and could be seen from several points of the house. A deck connected the living room to the pool, forming a patio within the waterfront garden.
On the opposite side, next to the garage ramp, I managed to secure the same width to mitigate the view of the kitchen and the opening views of the house next door with plants.
Shortly after the work was completed, the neighboring land was acquired. If the pool had been designed with this area already incorporated, most likely its position would be different. The pool could have been built further away from the house, increasing the garden area between the house and the pool with a greater distance from the wall, or even located on the west face, which in this new situation would welcome its dimensions. However, the situation was already set and it made no sense to intervene in the finished pool. I used the small swimming support deck at one of its headwaters as a gateway to the new lot, and the waterline, which reached its limits, divided the garden like a channel bleeding the land. The resulting scenario was surprisingly pleasant, creating a place to be from where you can see the whole house on the other side of the water, the other “river bank”, and the pool gained the space it needed to be more comfortable in the garden. This experience points out that we must always leave our comfort zone when designing a place. This position was not obvious, and it would be difficult to sustain it, but it was the best one. Some plants on this side were repeated on the other side, such as white tabebuia trees, philodendrons and ferns, making the visual transposition. With the demolition of the wall, another slightly higher gable appeared, next to which tall trees, triplaris and Stenocarpus sinuatus were planted, and the entrenched palm trees that made the previous closure were moved there. The pool that had an infinity edge dropping water over a channel in the old narrow bed received a larger pebble mat, adapting to the new circumstance, to continue overflowing and making the water return.
The Hymenaea courbaril, the Libidibia ferrea, the Plinia cauliflora, the triplaris, the cariotas that had already been planted in the first phase, embrace the built prism, gaining the windows of the second floor.
When, in a short space of time, the whole thought of a project that has just been executed and completed must be changed for some reason, in this case the annexation of a new plot of land, in some way the entire relationship of forces of the place must be rethought to achieve the previous balance. It entails a lot more work than just breaking the wall.
Intervention área 1ª phase: 700 m² / 2ª phase: extra 255 m²
Project and execution 2009 - 2013
Projeto Design. Ed 394, December 2012
The New York Times Style Magazine, August 2019
