A striking prefabricated timber home perched on stilts in Brazil's Bocaina region demonstrates how modern architecture can harmoniously blend with natural landscapes. Brazilian firm Arquipélago Arquitetos partnered with architect Mariana Caires to create an elevated house made of glulam wood for the Logiodice family, who have deep connections to this mountainous area outside São Paulo.
The story begins in the early 2000s when Pedro Logiodice's family acquired their first property in the Bocaina region of Brazil. Over the next two decades, through regular visits, the family developed profound connections with the land and with each other. "Over the past 25 years, this place has become profoundly meaningful to us," Pedro explains about the area situated outside São Paulo. "It provided a connection to nature that balanced my life spent in São Paulo's vast urban environment, carrying me from childhood through adulthood."
When the family needed more space but couldn't expand on their original property due to its location within a national park, they looked to adjacent land. "Recently, we acquired the neighboring property," Pedro notes. They named this new acquisition Terra Nostra Farm and engaged architect Mariana Caires along with Luis Tavares of Arquipélago Arquitetos to design a new family residence that would serve as their primary retreat.
The new property presented a dramatically different landscape compared to their original valley location. Terra Nostra sits atop a hill offering sweeping views of the rolling countryside. "Our goal was to create a house that felt comfortable, yet distinctly different from our previous property: lighter, more transparent, and genuinely open to the landscape," Pedro describes. The architectural team worked to create a structure that would literally and figuratively rise above the earth.
The remote location and challenging access to the property drove the decision toward prefabrication. "We had to design something with high engineering precision, and because of that we adopted a prefabricated, light timber structure," explains Tavares. Wood emerged as the natural choice not only for practical construction reasons but also for its environmental benefits, as trees capture carbon throughout their lifetimes, and for its ability to withstand the area's varying weather conditions.
Collaborating with engineer João Pini, the design team developed an innovative structural system that would be gentle on the land while strong enough to resist the harsh winds that sweep up the hillside. Their solution was an arched form that follows the natural curve of the terrain and reduces the need for steel bracing. "The landscape informs the architecture, and its form is its structure," Caires explains of this integrated approach.
The resulting home is a long, slender dwelling elevated on stilts that gracefully hugs the hillside contours. Floor-to-ceiling windows on all sides create the impression that the glulam timber roof hovers above the interior spaces. At both ends of the home, covered verandas provide outdoor spaces where residents can fully experience the sights, sounds, and aromas of the surrounding landscape. "In the living area we designed a continuous skylight along the roof ridge," says architect Luis Tavares. "This is amazing because the experience is always changing over the day and along seasons. It makes a connection with nature in a more complex way."
Inside, the home features an open-plan design that combines kitchen, living, and dining areas into one expansive space. The kitchen includes a built-in wood-burning oven, which Tavares particularly appreciates: "I love the wood oven, as it makes you connect to the place and the rural culture." The timber construction creates what Pedro describes as a cozy sense of grounding—"a warm, welcoming place of refuge to counter the sweeping views." Continuous flooring flows seamlessly from interior living spaces out to exterior decks, further connecting the home to its environment.
The home contains four bedrooms, each with its own en-suite bathroom. These private spaces represent one of Caires's favorite aspects of the design. "In the bedrooms, I appreciate how the windows frame the views," she says. "Each room offers a different invitation to contemplate the landscape." The bedroom wing is strategically positioned around large boulders and plantings, creating what Caires calls "a more welcoming scale within the vastness of the site."
A particularly striking feature is the home's circulation corridor, which curves around the hillside and is framed by floor-to-ceiling windows looking out to the grassy slopes and boulder formations. This design choice helped bring down the scale of the large structure and create a more intimate feeling. A massive boulder positioned just outside the curving hallway provides visual interest and creates the sensation that nature extends into the home itself.
Surrounding the house, the family operates a small-scale farming operation that produces cheese and olive oil by hand, tends to crops like corn and beans, and cares for sheep, chickens, pigs, and horses. "Our farm life centers on small-scale, artisanal production—not for commercial purposes, but for our own enjoyment and sustenance," Pedro explains. The property also offers natural attractions including waterfalls that the family visits regularly.
The home's design philosophy emphasizes the use of natural materials throughout both interior and exterior spaces. "The house had to be characterized with the rural context, so we used natural materials, such as wood and ceramic tiles," architect Mariana Caires explains. The exposed glulam beams not only provide structural support but also help define and organize both interior and exterior spaces, creating visual continuity throughout the design.
Local residents have embraced the distinctive structure, dubbing it "Casa do Pássaro"—the Bird House. "From a distance it resembles a bird perched on the hill, and inside, you truly feel as though you're flying," Pedro observes. This nickname perfectly captures the home's relationship to its site and the experience it provides to inhabitants and visitors.
Entering the house creates a unique sensory experience that Pedro compares to boarding a vessel: "Entering the house feels remarkably like stepping aboard a vessel. You cross a bridge-like passage, and once inside, the sensation is of being a bird soaring above the valley." The warm scent of wood permeates the interior, while the bedrooms provide cozy, intimate retreats and the living areas open generously with abundant natural light and fresh air.
The project demonstrates how careful attention to site conditions, combined with structural precision and sensitivity to local context, can result in architecture that enhances rather than dominates its natural setting. "The house exemplifies how structural precision combined with an attentive reading of the site can translate into warmth and sensitivity," Caires reflects on the completed project.
This innovative prefabricated home now serves as a launching point for the Logiodice family to continue their legacy in the Bocaina region, providing a structure that embraces and celebrates the airy, elevated qualities of its dramatic hillside setting while maintaining deep connections to the land that has shaped the family's life for more than two decades.
