How Can a 1,000 m² House Feel Weightless? | Jacobsen Arquitetura Interview
EKS Residence: The Architecture of Lightness and Suspended Volumes
Emerging from the dense Atlantic Forest along the coast of São Paulo, EKS Residence is a weekend retreat designed by Jacobsen Arquitetura for a family of surfers. Located within a residential community just minutes from the beach, the house explores the relationship between contemporary Brazilian architecture, tropical landscape and structural lightness.
Completed in 2022, the 1,053-square-meter residence occupies a 1,429-square-meter corner plot that had been home to the family's previous house for decades. Rather than completely redefining the site, the project preserves its most valuable legacy: an established tropical garden. The original building's orientation, certain geometric axes, existing views and swimming pool location informed the new design, allowing the architecture to emerge from the memory of the place.
The residence is conceived through a carefully balanced composition of horizontal planes, suspended volumes and open spaces. At ground level, two expansive slabs establish the impression of a single-story pavilion, with slender circular steel columns positioned along the perimeter to create generous, uninterrupted interiors. Enclosed volumes organize the service and entertainment areas, while floor-to-ceiling glazing opens the main living spaces toward the garden.
Above this transparent base, a series of seemingly independent volumes creates the impression of a treehouse suspended within the tropical canopy. Set back from the edges of the slabs, these volumes generate generous terraces, circulation spaces and a continuous dialogue between interior and exterior. Their arrangement introduces a deliberate contrast between the horizontal clarity of the ground floor and the more dynamic composition above.
Materiality reinforces this architectural language. Textured aluminum screens, finished in a tone inspired by Corten steel, alternate between solid and permeable surfaces, creating changing patterns of light and shadow. Custom-stained feijó wood introduces a warm gray palette that complements the metal structure while preserving the tactile warmth associated with Brazilian tropical architecture.
Throughout the residence, structure and materiality are used to express a central architectural ambition: to make a substantial building feel light, open and deeply connected to its surroundings. The interplay between transparency, enclosed volumes, cantilevers and vegetation allows the house to become part of the landscape rather than compete with it.
In this film, we take a poetic and cinematic journey through EKS Residence, accompanied by an in-depth interview with the architects from Jacobsen Arquitetura. Moving between its open living spaces, suspended volumes, elevated terraces and surrounding tropical garden, the film combines an immersive architectural experience with the architects' own perspectives on the design process.
Through their insights, we discover how the memory of the original house influenced the new project, how the composition of horizontal planes and seemingly floating volumes creates a sense of structural lightness, and how the careful selection of materials, textures and façade elements reinforces the relationship between architecture and nature. Together, the cinematic exploration and the architects' reflections reveal the thinking behind a residence conceived to feel as light and open as a treehouse, deeply connected to the Atlantic Forest.