BOA VISTA GARDEN
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
by Isabel Duprat
The Tijuca National Park and the beautiful views over the beach and the rock mountains are the protagonists of this project.
There were two buildings on the grounds, the main house crammed into the hillside and which would be demolished to make way for the new construction and an annex that would be renovated.
The landscaping project would have to give unity to the set of two different architectures. One of the great enigmas of landscaping is how to handle it with care.
It was a pleasant experience to meet Tom Kundig, whose houses / huts are designed to live in comfort with only the essentials and, above all, to experience surrounding nature, which, much more than architecture, is elected the queen of the party. I imagine he thinks so, his work communicates that.
The possibilities for locating the cabin on the existing plateau of the old house, confined between the hillside forest and the gap in the existing car access, were not many and for this reason the positioning of the house would have to be very precise to enable both views of interest: sea and mountain.
Together on a visit to the site, we agreed on a particularly good option between the ones we had. The house detached itself from the slope contained by stone walls, which were preserved, and opened onto the landscape.
I didn't want the two buildings to be seen at the same time. It would be an excess considering the plateau area. Then I made the forest slip between them, planting native trees that would amalgamate with the existing forest, such as Lecythis pisonis, Jacaranda mimosifolia, caroba, Handroanthus impetiginosus, Pterocarpus violaceus, Chrysophyllum cainito, and others.
The car ramp was designed with a basalt fillet floor that meets the broken basalt floor with grass joints that connect the two houses and all pedestrian accesses. At the meeting of the floors, an elevated change of level of more than 50 cm above was made to smooth the difference in dimensions of the two houses, which provided an important visual comfort by giving greater integration between the two plateaus.
I wanted to make the garden simple to receive the house, as it should be, and I drew soft curves with grasses of different colors, the design of which came from some seeds that I collect and tossed on my office's table. These grasses spread to the other side that had a monumental ironwood punctuating a lawn that I wanted to keep. I think that a lawn, to exist, must have an appropriate scale in relation to the place.
Behind the house, I took advantage of the stone walls and shaded voids to collect plants rising and falling, settling between the cracks and sprouting in colored spots, as do the begonias, ruellias, medinillas, acanthus, or making greens and textures seen in ferns, philodendrons and aglaonemas.
The decision on the location of the pool, which had the primary purpose of serving swimming, was the subject of numerous studies, mainly due to the intricate gaps where the previous pool was accommodated. There was a large area there to be used as a garden, but not in the existing configuration. Conquering this entire area of the ground and integrating it into the daily use of the house was not trivial, and this was one of the great goals of the landscaping project.
At first, the existing pool in the 60s faceted organic shape looked interesting, but there was something wrong with the proportions. As adapting this to a swimming pool with the dimensions of swimming was not making sense, as soon as the attempts were exhausted, I took the liberty guaranteed by the client to advance in new possibilities.
The pool then took on its autonomy and extended over the edge of the lawn, making the horizon line, taking advantage of the existing containment of a stone wall. The previous levels were altered in order to make the circulation more pleasant and the spaces more integrated, including visually. New 1,5 m high walls contained the pool deck and small garden patios accessed by smooth stairs accommodated them between concrete retainers. Concrete was the material of choice for both the pool box and the walls as it brings some reference of Kundig's architecture to this area of the garden that was further away from the main house, but from where it was visible. The stairs, deck and circulation received basalt, which mimics concrete so well.
The waterline flush with that of the lawn level can be seen from the house, at the same time as from the annex.
Trees and flower bushes, grasses, philodendrons, alocasia, pandanus, norantea, were distributed here and there, where they could spread and visually dissolve the unevenness.
I gave attention to the other areas of the property in order to restore the tree vegetation, quite flawed in some sectors, and designed paths with stones from the old construction and benches with the largest slabs so that these areas could be walked through and enjoyed.
I designed a small metal pergola on the lawn with the simplest structure possible, in order to, in the future, display the spectacle of the turquoise flowering of the jade vine.
Intervention area 9.000 m²
Project and execution 2013 - 2019
Great Gardens of the World - Rado Switzerland
Tom Kundig: Working Title. Princeton: 2020
GA Houses 136: Project, 2014
