CASA HISTORY
Casa Azul is a house that already had a previous life about 400 km from where it finds itself now in a rural village named Cuba on the border between the states of Bahia and Minas Gerais. The century-old farmhouse was carefully dismantled with precise tagging, numbering and photography of all materials, then transported and remounted at its paradisiacal new spot in the middle of the rainforest on the UXUA Maré (Portuguese for tides) grounds.
The structure consists primarily of large beams of braúna, one of the most beautiful and resistant woods of Brazil along with certain other hardwood species all forbidden to cut down now in Brasil because of their rarity, making them very prized globally.
The original house had consisted of seven small rooms which are now reconfigured to 3 big modern, open-living spaces full of light:
the kitchen/living room with its side walls featuring glass replacing clay walls while still maintaining the original wooden windows and doors apertures
the bedroom/wardrobe/tv room which opens out directly to a deck and rainforest-facing swimming pool which is covered in amber colored river stones and place in such a way it receives the orange sunset rays streaming down through the rainforest at the end of the day
a spacious bathroom with the atmosphere of a greenhouse overlooking both the pool and lush Atlantic rainforest.
120 square meters of covered space which makes up the original footprint, we added 30 meters of deck of cumaru wood and a 15-square-meter pool immersed in the rainforest.
The ceiling is very high, 5,5 meters tall, walls 3,5 meters. With the location featuring the shade of nearby trees and constant ocean breezes, the high ceilings help guarantee the need for A/C is almost non-existent, even in high summer.
DESIGN
During the covid pandemic about the only industry I know really still working in Bahia was construction. I was contacted by our long-time collaborator of antiques and reclaimed materials who found a house which was going to be demolished to make room for a new one. Instead of buying just pieces of the house to reuse as I’ve done many times in the past, perhaps because of the slow pace of time during the pandemic and the desire for a challenge, the idea came to me to do a very careful tear-down / deconstruction of the historic house and attempt to transport and rebuild the entire thing.
The cost for the entire house was about $25 thousand dollars, which actually was a bit of a premium to pay as there was not that much demand for such structures and houses like that have often just been left to rot or have a few of the best elements removed and the rest abandoned. But we were able to include within the agreement to receive EVERYTHING from the house and the the important step of documenting very very precisely where materials had been used exactly within structure so they could be put back together, a kind of very precise engineering process, a jigsaw puzzle played by lots of people not really used to working this way but who embraced the challenge. It was a fun and ultimately very successful experiment I think because also everyone was enthusiastic about the idea and it was a pandemic period when for sure were embracing hopeful things if they could find them.
The house was on the border of Minas Gerais and Bahia in a small mountain town called Cuba, extremely remote.
Two other farmhouses were bought really under identical circumstances, and actually they are neighbors of Casa Azul and just completed construction - they are called Casa Amarela (yellow house) and Casa Branca (white house) - which together with the completed casa Azul (blue house) are named from the old wooden paint colors dominant on each of these antique homes but coincidentally make up three of the colors of the Brazilian flag, with the fourth flag color green featured on an old jungle shack found at the property when it was bought and now also restored.
Yes, the immediate surroundings of the Casa Azul is landscaped with exclusively burgundy/purple plants and flowers (some of them edible and some medicinal inspired by our UXUA Vida Lab botanical research), this color palette is to contrast with the original fresh blue color of the house.
In general the idea behind the landscaping is an edible garden, mixing vegetables and fruits with ornamental and medicinal plants.
There is an added element to the landscape which is its audio aspects. The location has an unforgettable and highly impactful 24-hour-a-day changing acoustic landscape, the sound of tides, ocean breezes through the flora and abundant tropical birdsongs interspersed with the calls of monkeys. The 15% of the land which was originally deforested we replanted largely with fruits and palms attracting even more birds (parrots) and monkeys, whose calls and songs lend strongly to the very distinct, tropical atmosphere and is a wonderful example of a form of audio landscaping.
Throughout the house floorboards are cedar and canella (cinamon) wood from the original, antique casa and very few other sources.
Immediately upon entering the house is visible paneled louvers which are sculpted by our long-time collaborator, indigenous Pataxó craftsmen Rosivaldo Amiral who works with us full-time for almost 4-years, the inspiration was a mix of mid-century north american artist Leroy Sietzol and native Pataxo graphics of our region with symbols of what Maré means to us, such as fish, plants, flowers, sun, sea.
This feature is very distinct, what appears to be a wall of carved artwork actually opens as 9 separate panels creating a visual connection between the living area and bedroom, increasing / accentuating the overall lofty feel of the space - a marked contrast from its original form of 7 cut-up areas.
Beneath the 9 carved panels is a large UXUA D.A.S. sofa of reclaimed roxinha wood with cushions made to graphically represent the marine flag alphabet, with pillows spelling “uxua Maré”.
Several indigo dyed patchwork 5 legged stools from UXUA D.A.S sit across from the sofa.
A hanging lamp near the sofa is Palha da costa is woven together on the upper part with with Cipó - which are river grasses / reeds from the nearby Rio Trancoso.
To the left is hanging a ceramic plate by local artist Calazans, one of the original members of Brazil’s counter-culture movement to settle in Trancoso in the 1970’s and 80’s.
The kitchen is made entirely of all the extra, antique doors leftover from the original casa (reducing the number of rooms of the house created an abundance of doors / wooden trim), since we went from 7 rooms to 3 rooms that left 4 extra doors from which we constructed the kitchen. An important detail of the entire interior design concept is that all material that is new (not reclaimed) we painted in bright white, so also for the kitchen counter-top we used a fantastic white Brazilian marble with a wave of blue running through it.
In the kitchen are vintage, european opaline / ceramic lamps.
The 3 bar stools are called ‘Cangaço’ from Brazilian designer Elizandro Rabalo.
The dining table is an antique fazenda table, benches crafted from reclaimed canella wood, and the two chairs (of a series of 4) at the head of the table are called PAZ designed by Wilbert Das for a project with Casa Vogue Brasil in 2020, the design inspired by the olive branch symbol atop the door of Trancoso’s antique Sao Joao Batista Catholic church, 2nd oldest church still standing in Brasil.
The lamp atop the dining table is UXUA D.A.S., yellow glazed ceramic, half-sphere / semi-sphere.
The white, metallic double-celing-fan is from a Brazilian brand called Gerbar
The cabinets holding glassware and porcelain and rustic black, local pottery is vintage to which we added gold leaving on the backboard, and atop is a ceramic artwork of 3 vases ‘eternally connected’ by a chain of glazed ceramic beads made also for the Casa Vogue project of 2020 by designer Peter Kempkens, a long-time UXUA D.A.S. collaborator.
Adjoining bedroom
Bed - four poster bed by UXUA D.A.S. with a sculpted headboard in the same style as the louvre by Rosivaldo Pataxo, with an UXUA D.A.S. mosquitero of 100% organic cotton. Side tables are antique and atop them are UXUA D.A.S. glazed ceramic lamps with raffia water reed lampshade
Chairs are Poltrona U, Architizer A+ award winner for Best Residential Seating from 2020 of canella preta, which is a dark, hardwood with a deep shine - reclaimed from old beams of an antique house.
Built-in closet (concrete) with linen curtains, on top featuring a wooden garden of primitively sculpted plants by our wood-carver, representing bromelias and ginger flowers, with wood sourced at the property from fallen trees
Sculpted wooden sofa bed is UXUA D.A.S.. It’s a ‘queen-size’ sofa, meant to be comfortable for two, deep and cozy, and is upholstered in vintage Dutch, hemp army tent fabric (looks like linen but is hemp). Pillow is UXUA D.A.S. indigo patchwork. Next to the movable wall-mounted flatscreen tv is a tall cylinder UXUA D.A.S. lamp made of vintage linen patchwork on a copper frame
The round circular windows above the side tables are a vintage find (set of 3 - 1 also in bathroom) which were not original to the house but also sourced in Bahia state, the colored glass seeming to represent the Brazilian flag (yellow, green, blue, white)
Bathroom is entirely sculpted in enzyme-treated burnt white cement with rounded-off corners, water hardware all handmade in copper hydraulic tubing as found in local piping. White European opaline light fixtures above the sinks, bath, shower, sinks all overlooking the dense Atlantic rainforest through high glass window-wall, openable, a ‘jungle greenhouse’ effect while the mirrors are moveable and mounted on the same copper tubing. A ceramic sculpture series as a lamp. Artwork is from Leonieke Kormelink and is called OPAL.
The swimming pool connected to both the kitchen / living and the bedroom are two vintage poltronas made of a single piece of pequi wood. The deck is made of reclaimed cumaru wood, and the pool itself is covered in amber riverstones. The principal affect of this area is water and stone immersed in rainforest, with the length of the pool extending from the house westward, allowing the late afternoon sun to set through the trees, giving the entire jungle an enchanting golden glow heightened by the end of the day calls of wildlife.
The house is completely stilted and thus animal life passes freely beneath it.
