The proposal for a residence in a condominium in the city of São José dos Campos, for a young couple with small children, arose from the request for a home for life. This is the scope that Fernanda Marques' project contemplates; with almost 1600 square meters, an extensive program was designed and implemented for housing in the best way the owners’ demands. It was with this brief in mind that Fernanda designed an “L” shaped ground floor plan, which holds the social area, with a totally permeable volume, containing direct access to the garden and pool area. The second floor holds the intimate area containing the bedrooms and is almost entirely suspended to catch the beautiful view of the surrounding landscape.

The large residence was designed with a slim metallic structure that gives a greater lightness to the overall vast structure of the house and accentuates its horizontal lines. The metallic structure also contributes to the projects’ integration of the interiors with the exteriors by the extruding of the metallic slabs, creating a pergola structure that elongates the house and poetically embraces the Jabuticabeira trees, a native species from the Atlantic Forest. The tree is known for its purplish-black and white-pulped fruit called Jabuticaba, which grows directly on the tree trunk, and that also gives the name to our project, Casa Jabuticaba. 

The four main materials used in the house are travertine stone, wood, glass, and metal. The travertine stone was used in the entire social area flooring, all the way from the entrance of the house, which is made through a fluctuating garden above a water mirror, to the swimming pool. The wood was incorporated in a variety of ways throughout the project, you can find it dressing the walls as a certified Cumaru wood that contrasts perfectly with the metallic structure, or you can also find it in the flooring on the intimate area’s block, as a certified Tauari wood. 

As for the program, Casa Jabuticaba has a simple and conventional program that is tied together with a very solid thorough line of visually integrating the internal spaces and opening them up to the surrounding landscape. The program contains a living room, a dining room, a barbecue area, a kitchen, five en-suite bedrooms, a gym area, two home theaters, one associated with the living room and another one on the upper floor for more intimate use with family, and a playroom for the kids.