LWF Residence

Set within the Atlantic Forest on São Paulo’s North Coast, the LWF Residence by Patrícia Martinez Arquitetura is a timber refuge designed to touch the land as lightly as possible. Completed in 2024 in the Iporanga Condominium, the house looks out toward São Pedro Beach, and from the first sketches the São Paulo office shaped both its structure and its surfaces to leave the smallest feasible footprint on a sensitive coastal ecosystem.

That intent is most visible in the choice of glued laminated timber, or MLC, for the primary structure. Engineered wood lets a project arrive on site largely prefabricated, so assembly is quick and clean, off-cuts are reduced, and the material itself stores carbon rather than emitting it the way concrete or steel frames tend to. For a house deep in protected forest, where construction traffic and waste carry real ecological cost, that efficiency is as much an environmental decision as an aesthetic one.

Living with the Landscape

The plan is organized into legible blocks. One volume, clad entirely in wood, gathers the social life of the house: a TV room, toilet, kitchen and an integrated living room flow into one another without hard separation. Large glass panels held in PVC frames pull in daylight and frame the surrounding vegetation, a quiet reminder that the forest is the real protagonist here. Above, a transversal block finished in precast holds the intimate area, four bedrooms that open onto a terrace with panoramic views of the beach. Raising the sleeping rooms shields them from the street while opening them fully to the horizon, a balance of privacy and prospect that defines much contemporary residential architecture.

The lower floor carries the practical program of garage, service area and technical storage, leaving the upper levels free for daily life. A swimming pool sits on the front façade in line with the gourmet space, and the landscaping works to restore what construction disturbed, knitting the house back into the surrounding greenery. Like much of the timber building now emerging across Brazil, the LWF Residence treats the forest not as a backdrop but as a partner, using glued laminated timber to build close to nature while disturbing it as little as a permanent home can.