House FLA by Frederico Bicalho
House FLA is a residential project located in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, designed by Frederico Bicalho. The structure, built on a steeply sloping lot, features the use of concrete as both a functional and aesthetic element and embraces modern design principles to create an open and fluid integration with the landscape, ensuring light and ventilation throughout the space.
Organic Architecture Within Belo Horizonte’s Landscape
The architecture is born from listening carefully to the land and the program. A steeply sloping lot, framed by buildings on the sides and back, posed the first challenges — and offered the first answers.
To accommodate the construction, a cut was made in the front portion of the lot, next to the street, defining the two lower floors: on the first, the access and the garage; on the second, my office, where creation takes place between the concrete and the view.
A Suspended House Offering Views
The house rises on the third level, on a plateau that allows for a linear layout — a suspended, fluid house, integrated into the landscape and the horizon.
The building rests on the side boundaries and opens up in the permitted distances, strategically distancing itself from the neighboring buildings. In this way, it seeks light, ventilation and privacy. The high ceiling intensifies this relationship with the external environment, allowing natural light to invade the spaces and the sky to be part of everyday life.
Brutalist Design With Visual And Tactile Harmony
The choice of concrete was natural from the beginning — not only as a structure, but as a language. Brutal in its essence, it reveals itself in solids and voids, in planes that protect from the street and, at the same time, open up to the sky, the mountains, the city. A gesture of strength and subtlety.
The landscaping extends the greenery of the street into the interior of the lot, adding to the presence of the swimming pool, which creates movement, occupies the rough and softens the rigid. It attracts birds, gives life, and establishes a silent connection with the divine.
In the finishing touches, what would be simple becomes noble. The exposed concrete — whether structural or in the floors — contrasts with quartzite, granite, metals, and wood. One material enhances the other, creating visual and tactile harmony. It is the elegance of a well-made composition, where each element finds its place naturally.
Textures And Materials Balance A Space Sensitive To Time
In the choice of furniture, the contrast of textures brings welcome and warmth, dissolving the coldness of the concrete and inviting rest and conviviality. Leather, bouclé, cotton, linen, wood and aluminum make up an urban, practical and contemporary home, but above all, sensitive to time and affection.
The office follows the same line as the house: between home and office, between the functional and the cozy — a creative space with soul.
In the end, this house is made up of many choices, big and small. It is the synthesis of what I believe, designed with intention and emotion.
Photography courtesy of Frederico Bicalho
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