MNMA Studio’s Dois Trópicos in São Paulo, Brazil has been crafted by artisan’s hands using rough imperfect natural materials, bringing a homelike familiarity to a commercial space.
Every material has its own characteristics and limits for its definition. To work on the threshold of its possibilities - but not defying it - is indeed a fertile ground for advanced thinking and technique development. Materiality builds the crossing planes that then become carriers for a tonal rhythm; the resulting immersion brings up new intimacy to the architectural space.
The material used was created by a process of cooking the subtle varied colours of earth into bricks, allying the technical drawings to the empirical exercise of craftsmanship. The same material was projected onto walls and ceilings, honouring and expanding its plasticity; it expands our senses, bringing texture, tone gradation and detail to the delicate gesture of drawing spaces, even inviting us for a pause to feel the smell of wet earth when it rains.
The general purpose is to create a contemporary element that, when opened, would bring back some lost time of ancient forms of construction, slow passing of time, contact with the earth it feels like "home".
