- Project: Jenga House
- Architect: Studio GM
- Location: Brazil, Val-de-Cans
- Year: 2024
- Photography: Bernard Cunha
A Playful Geometry in Motion
The Jenga House by Studio GM is an exploration of balance, lightness, and structural rhythm—an architectural game of stacked volumes that redefines tropical modern living. Located in Val-de-Cans, a leafy neighborhood where nature and architecture intertwine, the home emerges from its terrain as a series of offset boxes, sliding and stacking like the wooden pieces of its namesake game.
But behind this playful formal gesture lies a clear logic: the interlocking volumes frame courtyards, shade terraces, and create fluid connections between interior and exterior spaces, making the house both intuitive and environmentally responsive.
Concept and Spatial Composition
Studio GM approached the project as a spatial puzzle that adapts to its site’s natural features—most notably two existing trees that dictated the circulation and spatial hierarchy. Instead of clearing the plot, the architects designed around the trees, allowing them to become anchors in the architectural composition.
The resulting organization is composed of three horizontal layers that shift slightly along their axes:
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The ground level houses social and leisure spaces, fully open to the garden and pool.
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The middle level contains semi-private areas such as the dining room, kitchen, and family lounge, all surrounded by terraces.
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The upper level is dedicated to bedrooms and intimate spaces, elevated to capture breezes and panoramic views.
This vertical rhythm ensures cross-ventilation, natural light, and a sense of suspended openness, while also defining clear spatial transitions between social, semi-private, and private realms.
Climate, Orientation, and Comfort
Designed for Brazil’s tropical climate, the house responds intelligently to its environmental context. Each cantilever and overhang is a passive shading device, reducing solar gain and allowing for comfortable year-round living without excessive mechanical cooling.
Large sliding glass panels blur the boundaries between inside and outside, transforming the home into an open-air pavilion when fully opened. The orientation was carefully studied to protect against direct western sun while maximizing natural airflow through the interior.
In every season, the architecture adapts—offering cool shade, filtered light, and natural ventilation that make the experience of living in Jenga House both sustainable and sensorial.
Materiality: Warm Modernism
The material palette reinforces the home’s sense of tactile warmth and structural precision.
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Exposed concrete forms the primary structure, lending strength and sculptural clarity.
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Wooden soffits and cladding introduce warmth and human scale, contrasting with the cool, smooth surfaces of concrete and glass.
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Stone floors connect the interior to the exterior terraces, emphasizing continuity and grounding the light volumes above.
The balance of materials evokes the honesty of modern Brazilian architecture—where material expression, structural rhythm, and climate response are inseparable.
Living Through Layers
The experience of movement through Jenga House is deliberately cinematic. The shifting volumes frame vistas of garden, sky, and pool, while vertical voids bring natural light deep into the core.
Circulation flows diagonally through open staircases and glazed bridges, enhancing the sensation of floating among the volumes. The upper terraces offer moments of retreat, while the ground-floor living areas encourage community and outdoor life.
The architecture invites both interaction and solitude, offering the family varied spatial experiences throughout the day.
A Modern Home Rooted in Nature
More than an aesthetic statement, Jenga House is a model of environmental coexistence. Its lightweight presence, permeable facades, and preserved vegetation demonstrate a design philosophy grounded in respect—for the site, the climate, and the rhythms of life within.
By translating the playful balance of stacked forms into a livable reality, Studio GM delivers a home that is both refined and approachable, modern and timeless—a composition that celebrates geometry, nature, and the art of thoughtful design.
