“When I’m working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.”
… R. Buckminster Fuller

Clever articulation of space and the cool, understated finishes means it brings the jungle into itself. I can only imagine what it’s like to be inside, the forest and turquoise Paraty waters framed by the geometry of the spaces.

Yes, of course it’s big and costly – and perhaps “arrogant”; it’s owned by a billionaire media mogul and is intended to be a spectacular grand gesture.

And to the person who wrote the (hilarious) comment: “the kitchen doesn’t allow for anyone to keep you company while you cook unless the weather is nice.”: Do you really think the uber-wealthy worry about such things? They have staff to feel lonely in the kitchen.

I see Wallpaper* magazine has just awarded it the world’s Best New Private House. Deservedly so.

This design is more beautifull, but it’s like the architect forget the human scale. It’s so big!! But for some…big is beautifull!

A casa é show, assim como Paraty e claro, o nosso Brasil!

the kitchen doesn’t allow for anyone to keep you company while you cook unless the weather is nice. everything is too narrow in one or another direction. that picture with the lights along one wall, leading to a doorway to another part of the house… it feels as if there isn’t room to walk there without walking on the lights. lack of symmetry.

all those glass balustrades look confining and uncomfortable and cold. the wire in the stair railing looks high-tensile, like something out of ‘cube’. dangerous-looking.

yes ok it looks pleasant with the sun shining in at the one time of day that it does- but notice there seem not to be windows at any other aspect. and although it superfically appears that there is an openness to nature, those pools act as a barrier against it. i have stayed in a little wooden house in which you stepped out of the bright front room and onto the dunes. THAT was close to nature. no glass walls and elevated walled-off pools there no, it’s all too bunker-like, prison-like.

and looking at it makes me dread being flattened, slab down onto slab. horrible

I can hear the response already. “The program called for a concrete tunnel with a single axis preventing any views of the periphery and a bitchen futuristic glass wall out to the ocean.” Tell me that’s not putting form way above function.

I can hear the architects saying “Take it easy man, it’s just a place for hanging out and looking cool; tossing back a couple of tall ones. Nothing wrong with that, eh?”

Look at this building again and tell me there’s not some kind of alarm that goes off when you contemplate actually committing to live in it for the rest of your life, with your extended family.

Real architecture has the decency and dignity to be quiet–not to be there for anybody but the occupant. What kind of an architect are you if your work is stained by your childish need for attention. Style is your enemy, and it’s your client’s enemy. Real architecture is goddamn invisible and most of our profession has completely forgotten that.