Project Name: TM House

Location: Porto Feliz, Brazil

Design Team: Jacobsen Arquitetura

Total Floor Area: 2458 m²

Completion: 2022

Photography: Fernando Guerra | FG+SG

Feature: Jacobsen Arquitetura's "TM House" demonstrates how innovative dispersed pavilion organization strategies and masterful family relationship spatialization design philosophy fusion techniques can transform a residence on lakeside sloping terrain in São Paulo's outskirts into a culturally profound sanctuary of multigenerational family cohesion and environmental harmony.

This 2458-square-meter residence dramatically spans across sloping landscape, presenting itself as a profound meditation on contemporary Brazilian residential lifestyle integration, topography-responsive design, and tropical architectural traditions fusion. Through carefully considered spatial organization and material selection, it creates a living experience that seamlessly weaves functionality with natural poetic sensibility.

The project's most compelling design feature lies in its architectural expression of family structure and spatial reimagining. Four independent blocks serve not only as functional units but become the core of spatial organization, ensuring the non-orthogonal layout gracefully follows site contour lines. This design strategy creates continuous dialogue between architecture and family relationships, achieving a visual harmonious coexistence effect.

Jacobsen Arquitetura's design language fluently expresses contemporary tropical architectural vernacular, employing modern applications of natural materials such as wood and metal structure to redefine multigenerational living experiences. Continuous covered walkway systems are innovatively used to unify architectural language while cleverly creating physical and emotional connections between family members. This bold integration strategy not only adds functional independence to spaces but cleverly accommodates the complex functional demands of multigenerational family life.

Most remarkably, the architects create comfortable microclimate environments between different functional zones through clever manipulation of six-meter cantilevered eaves and Venetian blind skin. Social spaces within the main block unfold longitudinally, with gardens creating visual barriers in transitions to intimate areas, complemented by strategic spatial gaps that allow natural airflow throughout the residence, while external landscaped stairs lead to the pool, whose position underwent multiple height tests to ensure unobstructed views from house to lake, creating seamless indoor-outdoor atmospheric transitions.

Landscape strategy continues this harmonious coexistence design philosophy between architecture and nature. Existing sloping vegetation and strategically positioned gardens create mutual resonance, with metal structure-supported cantilevered eaves reinforcing the integration between residence and surrounding natural environment. Large openings promote cross-ventilation and abundant natural light, ensuring fresh and pleasant living environments, perfectly suited for family life and multigenerational living.

Design Team: Jacobsen Arquitetura stands as a distinguished representative of Brazilian architectural practice, founded decades ago in Rio de Janeiro by Paulo Jacobsen, having established a pioneering reputation in contemporary residential design and environmentally responsive architectural language innovation since its founding. This practice based in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Lisbon redefines contemporary Brazilian architects' role in international design discourse through coordinated integration of design and environment.

Jacobsen Arquitetura brings exceptional environmental sensitivity design perspectives and deep understanding of interdisciplinary approaches to architectural practice. The practice has garnered recognition for its commitment to integrating traditional colonial and indigenous architectural wisdom with contemporary international modernism, with founding principal Paulo Jacobsen bringing forty-five years of architectural practice experience, and partner Bernardo Jacobsen accumulating rich international professional experience in Europe and Japan, jointly leading the firm's diversified projects across the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Oceania.

The firm's design philosophy emphasizes that architecture should transcend stylistic limitations, designed not merely to satisfy basic needs but to evolve organically with inhabitants' lifestyles and environmental conditions. Through deep attention to site-specific recognition and sensory experience, working across diversified projects from residences to hotels, commercial buildings, and museums, they believe the best architecture results from refined interventions through precise and thoughtful processes. Jacobsen Arquitetura believes architecture should serve as a carrier of inhabitants' identity and family memory, creating unique environmentally responsive living experiences through strategic spatial organization and material selection.

Beyond practice, through thoughtful integration of natural materials with modern construction methods, local climatic conditions and international design elements application, and time-tested tropical architectural wisdom, Jacobsen Arquitetura has established itself as a significant contributor to contemporary Brazilian architectural discourse, creating architectural works that are both environmentally responsive and embrace global design vision. The firm's Rio de Janeiro Museum of Art (MAR-RJ), completed in 2013, was selected as one of the 100 most important architectural projects of the year by Architecture Now, receiving the Architizer A+ Awards in the museum category and LEED Silver certification, focusing on creating profound spatial experiences that embody fluidity, transparency, luminosity, and structural lightness.