Studio Arthur Casas affixes dramatic cantilever to Brazilian house
Local architecture practice Studio Arthur Casas has used dramatic cantilevers and overhangs to extend the volume of a house with wood and stone accents across a site in São Paulo, Brazil.
Completed in 2025, Grama House spreads across an acre corner lot with a sawtooth edge that allows the program to recede across the site.
"In this house, the inspiration came from the site itself – a corner lot with open views and no immediate visual obstructions – and from the desire to create an architecture that spreads out and breathes," studio principal Arthur Casas told Dezeen.
"We worked with horizontal planes and interlocking volumes that extend toward the landscape, allowing the house to settle naturally into the terrain."
The expansive program – totalling 1,800 square metres (19,375 square feet) – features a ground floor that holds service spaces and a garage topped by a massive indoor/outdoor upper level where the rest of the programme takes place.
The ground level includes the large garage to house the client's car collection. The upper level contains the sleeping suites, lounge area and an office that cantilevers 11 meters over the home's entrance to form a porte-cochere.
This office is suspended by steel trusses fixed to 50-centimetre square columns.
"This space constitutes the project's main structural gesture," the studio said.
"The technical complexity was heightened by the fact that the greatest live load is concentrated at the cantilever's extremity, where fixed millwork is located, demanding rigor in both detailing and execution."
With the interplay of volumes and cantilevers, the residence functions primarily on one level for easy, everyday mobility.
The material palette aims to establish continuity between the exterior and interior with metal, a rough-stone and plaster mix, and Accoya wood on the outside, transitioning to European oak and textured paint on the inside. Rough stone with plaster defines both the facade and the inside walls.
"This choice reinforces material unity and constructive coherence throughout the residence, while creating a balance between structural robustness and sensory comfort," the studio said.
Motorised brise-soleils spread throughout the house, drawing natural light and air through the spaces.
"The cantilever, the split levels and the brise-soleil filtering the light are not formal gestures – they are precise decisions to frame views, bring light deep inside, and make the landscape an active presence in daily life," Casas said.
"The result is a house that is clear, ventilated, and truly alive in the family's routine."
Established in 1990, Studio Arthur Casas has a team of architects, designers and urbanists that work across São Paulo, New York and Lisbon.
Previously, the studio created a holiday home topped with a grass roof to blend in with a surrounding golf course, designed a prefabricated home with SysHaus to avoid "negative surprises" during the construction project and completed a transparent house with sliding glass walls that open the spaces entirely – all in Brazil.
The photography is by César Béjar Studio.
Project credits:
Author: Arthur Casas
Interior manager: Eduardo Mikowski
Decoration manager: Gabriel Contreira
Illustration and interior architect: Amanda Tamburus, Augusto Godoy, Natalia Lorenzoni
Collaborators: OM Studio; Rodrigo Oliveira; Benedictis; Zamaro; LogiProject; Noise; Florense; Akkerman
Contractor: TNC Construções
Consultants: Fort Real Estate; Construplena
Suppliers: Lapa Garden; E-light; TAAG; Unibox; Assistec; MC Movelaria; Taniguchi); RCA; CBP; Terracor; Allform; Amazona; Core
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