Halfway between São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, off the BR-101 highway, lies a corner of Brazil bounded by forested mountains that edge their way down to the sea. The Saco do Mamanguá, a tropical fjord, cuts between the mainland and the peninsula of Juatinga, where ridges approaching 1,600 feet frame a narrow bay; this pristine spot is where businessman Ícaro Fernandes, his wife, Cristina, and their five children, ranging in age from three to 24, come to trade life in the urban jungle of São Paulo for waterskiing and dolphin-watching. On weekends, the clan braves São Paulo’s notorious traffic to make the nearly three-hour drive to the colonial town of Paraty, where they hop onto a speedboat for the short ride to their beachfront home.
Fernandes and his family got to know Saco do Mamanguá in 2001, when they visited friends who owned a house in the area, and they eventually decided to buy a 99-acre property on one of the inlet’s loveliest beaches. Fernandes, a real-estate developer who also owns a food-import business, had long admired the work of Brazilian architects Bernardes + Jacobsen, lauded for their imaginative tropical-modern houses. So he called on the firm—now headed by Thiago Bernardes, son of the late Claudio Bernardes and grandson of Sergio Bernardes (1919–2002), and Paulo Jacobsen, partner to all three generations—to design his family’s retreat. “My father and Paulo were constantly researching how to build with natural materials and with an economy of resources—for example, trying to understand how fishermen built their simple wood shelters and how to integrate good natural ventilation into a house,” explains Thiago Bernardes. “That’s the vision Ícaro asked us to incorporate into his home.”
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| Master's Bedroom |
Instead of siting the house on the property’s highest point, as his client imagined, Bernardes suggested placing the nearly 11,000-square-foot building closer to the beach, nestled between two small hills. Bernardes knew cooling breezes would flow naturally through the pass and also clear through the house; this in turn led him to a dramatic layout in which a double-height living area, open to the elements through louvered windows and pivoting glass doors, would spill out onto a deep, shaded veranda extending the full length of the house.
This towering central room neatly divides the interior into three parts. To one side of the space, a kitchen, dining room, and service wing sit below a spacious master suite. On the other, two guest rooms and a family room are beneath the children’s bedrooms; a bridge spans the open living area to connect the family’s sleeping quarters. The combination of skylights overhead and palm and banana trees sprouting from planters set into the floor makes the interior feel like an extension of the outdoors. “Every idea I had in my head about what the house would look like and where it would be located, Thiago said no to,” recalls Fernandes with a laugh. “He didn’t do a single thing I requested. But it turned out ten times better than I ever imagined.”
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