Modern and functional Sao Paulo escape

Isay Weinfeld Arquitecto designed the Sumaré house, in São Paulo, Brazil for a graphic designer who desired a “spacious house, where she could work, exercise, entertain friends and, of course, live in.” The plot is not a small one 7,535 square feet (700 square meters), but due to height restriction laws, the building could not exceed 2 floors, thus an underground floor was needed for the caretaker’s quarters and the atelier. Both spaces open to a lawn so the feeling of being underground is forgotten. On the middle floor, a few steps above street level, a sitting and dinning room open to a larger lawn.

In the living room, a long étagère displays the owner’s collection, ranging from works of art to design and vintage objects. The home also includes a swimming pool and a dance floor for the designer to practice ballet routines, in addition to entertaining areas, two bedrooms and all other rooms suitable to a residence. For her private bedroom, the space is enclosed only by a screen of pre-cast concrete blocks, allowing the designer to see the city skyline in the distance. On the top level, a spacious wooden deck provides ample room for an outdoor entertaining area. Via

Photos: Nelson Kon

Glamour and luxury defined in this incredible Aussie villa

Located in Melbourne, Australia, the Verdant Avenue House was designed by Robert Mills Architects. The home is a swank living space outfitted with super-high ceilings and a 3.5 metre wide sculptural staircase featured as a focal point to the structure. This project house reflects RMA’s unfaltering commitment to marrying purity of form with function, and the belief that a precise balance of architecture, interior design and landscape will always create a truly great home. The project philosophy from the outset was to create a luxurious contemporary family home. It needed to accommodate the clients’ love of entertaining, their extensive artwork collection and a desire to connect to the natural environment outside. The interior and exterior living and entertaining spaces sit side by side on the ground level, separated by floor to ceiling glass walls and sliding doors. These doors open to a 25 metre lap pool, which runs the length of the building and provides natural cooling to the living areas. Energy-efficient features include a smart lighting system and motorized oversize exterior window louvers, which provide natural light and ventilation. Via

Chic coastal cottage retreat

Like driftwood collecting in courses on the beach, this incredible beach home nestles comfortably between the waterfront and road along a narrow site on the northern coast of Jupiter Island, Florida. This 3,600 square foot modern structure has been designed by Hughes Umbanhowar Architects. Completed in 2004, the house has been designed to be timeless, as both a quaint coastal cottage retreat and a chic island villa. The geometries of the house are complemented by the pitched nautical dynamism of a structure perched on piers and railings, ready to set sail at a moment’s notice. Situated on the beach, the house affords direct access to the water, reinforcing the immediacy of the relationship to site and the spontaneity of island living.

The design has been schematically layed out to incorporate three distinct elements, glass, sand and aluminum for their metaphorical and material possibilities. The sand element represents the sleeping area, aluminum has been used to enrich the entertaining space, and glass is used to enhance the public living spaces. Each division has been sensitively oriented to capture light and views. The ceramic fritted glass used in the kitchen and dining room lends translucency and visual play to the south-facing two-story entertaining space. The textured face of stucco or “sand” of the north-facing sleeping area underscores the ancient wisdom of worn stone, an apt sensibility for an intimate space infused by soft morning light. Linking the two, the core area of the home which is the kitchen area, has been sheathed with louvers (aluminum vertical blinds).

Exotic tropical villa in Mykonos

This beautiful island home was designed by Javier Barba in 2002 in Mykonos, Greece. Mykonos is among the most fabled of all the Greek isles, slap in the middle of the Aegean. Nowhere else, it seems, has the water ever looked this deeply mysterious, not least because it contrasts so inherently with the spotless whitewashed houses that shimmer in the sun at each turning point along the coast. The home was built traditionally as a series of fat white cubes piled one on top of the other, with their windows and doors picked out in vivid colors. Designed with a flat-roof to resist the gale-force winds that hit the island, the home has been painted a perfect, uniform white for the very good reason that it deflects the scorching rays of the sun.

For this stunning villa on Mykonos, Barba was allowed to design as he wished on this large plot of land outside a village with unobstructed views over a private beach toward the sea. Barba designed the home to be one with the landscape, using locally sourced materials to do so. To break up some of the starkness of the whitewalls, plain stones were used on the exterior facade of the home. The client is a businessman based in Athens who wished to have a home that he and his family could use as a quiet haven, not only during the summer months but for sporadic breaks throughout the year. The owner was looking for sophisticated simplicity where he could both unwind and entertain large numbers of friends with the least amount of fuss. It was just as important to design the interiors as it was the exteriors. The clients enjoy entertaining by having long lunches with lots of friends, so a whole outdoor living area was built with a kitchen, a barbecue, a bar and plenty of space for guests to sit around or sunbathe. Photos: Panagiotis Fotiadis

This staircase leads from the first floor down to the second floor bedrooms, which Barba has modeled after Mykonos’s ancient architecture.