Location: Paraty, Brazil

Design Team: Dado Castello Branco Arquitetura  

Area: 600 m²

Year: 2022

Photography: Fernando Guerra | FG+SG

Design Features: FM House stands within the Laranjeiras community in Paraty, Rio de Janeiro. On a compact plot surrounded by abundant tropical landscape, Dado Castello Branco Arquitetura avoids the character of an enclosed 600 m² villa. A two-storey arrangement instead establishes a continuous line from entrance and garden through the living rooms toward the beach, keeping the house between vegetation and sea.

The ground floor aligns living, dining and a covered veranda as a connected band of occupation. When the large sliding glass doors open, the interior floor continues toward the timber deck and pool. Eaves, stone walls, furniture and light replace fixed partitions, while the pool stretches toward the sand as a layer between domestic space and the coast.

An all-white helical stair forms the interior's strongest spatial event. Rising sculpturally from the bright ground floor, it concentrates attention within an otherwise restrained setting. Garden openings meet the turning stair, and reflected side light moves across its white surfaces, transforming circulation into a vertical connection between changing levels of landscape.

Stone, timber and glass establish a clear, tactile material order. Substantial stone walls anchor the transparent social areas, while timber brise-soleil and operable panels regulate sun and ventilation upstairs. Cantilevered slabs shade the ground floor, and pale flooring continues from inside to veranda, supporting open-air life in a tropical climate.

Light timber panelling, natural fibres and low-saturation tones shape the interiors. Furniture by designers including Vico Magistretti and Patricia Urquiola sits alongside artworks in the living and dining areas, stair landing and private rooms. Objects do not compete with the architecture; their scale, texture and spacing reinforce the relaxed character of a coastal home.

The refinement of this private house lies less in an emphatic silhouette than in the order created after boundaries recede. Opening glass, timber screens, deep eaves and landscape continuously adjust exposure, connecting every room with nature while preserving the calm required for long-term living. Its design value rests in turning a resort vocabulary into precise daily space.

Design Team: Dado Castello Branco graduated in Architecture and Urbanism from the Faculty of Fine Arts in São Paulo in 1993 and continued his studies at the École Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris. His practice works across high-end residential, interior and corporate projects, balancing comfort with sophistication through natural materials, pale tones and a close coexistence between inside and outside.

FM House was led by Dado Castello Branco Arquitetura, with landscape design by Rodrigo Oliveira Paisagismo and photography by Fernando Guerra | FG+SG. The studio's SoHo Apartment received Best Interior Project at the 2026 Robb Report Design Awards. Here, its control of material, light and domestic scale turns the tropical coast into a continuously perceptible background for everyday life.。