RN House

Furkan Sen11 May 20242 Mins read377

RN House is a weekend retreat in Itaúna, Minas Gerais, Brazil, where Jacobsen Arquitetura built a home around a single preserved native tree rather than around a view of the water. Conceived as a vacation home for a couple, their children, and grandchildren to share on weekends and holidays, the project began from a problem common to lakeside sites: the original structure sat as close to the reservoir as possible, matching the pattern of the houses nearby, yet its outlook was blocked by trees. The architects chose to relocate the house to a higher position, opening an unobstructed view across the reservoir.

A native Vinhático tree that once stood behind the old construction was repositioned to the center of the plot and given a leading role, with the house arranged to wrap around it. The landscaping, designed by Rodrigo Oliveira Paisagismo, reused a large part of the existing planting, moving specimens to suit the new layout and favoring solutions that are easy to maintain. With the trees kept, large flowerbeds and a spacious low garden were created to blend with the surroundings. As Rodrigo Oliveira describes it, good landscaping should “frame the nature” already present on the site, an idea that guides the whole composition.

Living Around the Landscape

The root level of the Vinhático set the height of a flat, landscaped platform on which the single-storey plan unfolds. The ground floor takes on asymmetrical contours and holds the living rooms and verandas at the front, with the bedrooms placed at the back, so that every part of the house keeps wide views of the outdoors. A wooden deck reaching over the canopy of the Vinhático ties the interior directly to the garden. Granite and freijó wood run through the residence as finishes, recalling the materials and mood of a Brazilian farmhouse.

Houses of this kind ask the architect to balance shelter and openness, framing the climate and terrain rather than shutting them out, a concern long associated with the warm, indoor-outdoor character of Brazilian modern architecture. Siting a home beside a body of water also raises questions of drainage, orientation, and respect for existing vegetation that shape every decision, much as they do across the broader practice of landscape architecture. Set within the rolling terrain of Minas Gerais, RN House reads less as an object dropped on the land and more as a frame built to hold the garden, the water, and one well-placed tree in a single view.