The Award for Best Use of Herringbone Goes to This Bamboo House

Hopefully this becomes a pattern

June 11, 2018 9:00 am

It’s no secret we’re big proponents of an autumnal herringbone, whether it’s a wool-blend blazer or full-bore Sherlock Holmes deerstalker.

The one place we never expected to recommend it? The façade of a tropical bungalow.

But it’s 2018 and stranger things have happened than Brazil’s Bamboo House (or Casa Bambu, in Portuguese), an architectural exercise in the unexpected from studio Vilela Florez.

To create the herringbone design, the team of Daniel F. Flórez and Mariana Vilela inlaid bamboo sticks in the recesses between vertical concrete “ribs” that make up the exterior. But it’s more than a pretty face: the panels offer shade and temperature regulation from the sweltering Rio Grande do Norte climate.

Bamboo House (10 images)

Lest you think this is some glass-wall-to-make-the-room-bigger optical illusion, the living spaces are similarly satisfying, if not as radical. The pool-adjacent patio — which includes the main living room and kitchen — is paved in the style of traditional Portuguese sidewalks and sheltered by a wooden roof and two stone walls. In the main building, there are three bedrooms, each with their own adjoining bathroom.

Ready to put a down payment on your new getaway? Sorry, this one’s spoken for. Not to rub salt in the wound, but Vilela Florez notes that the owners won’t even be shacking up here most of the year, choosing to spend the majority of their time sailing around the Mediterranean.

If you ask nicely, maybe they’ll put it on Airbnb.

Photos via Vilela Florez

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