A Stark White Residence Signals the Renaissance of a Brazilian Fishing Town

The village of São Miguel do Gostoso has always been remote. Cut off by the caatinga, a huge swath of semiarid land stretching into the Atlantic Ocean at Brazil’s easternmost point, the coastal town was accessible only by horseback as recently as the 1960s. Architect Pep Pons got there in 2011, while taking what he thought would be a sabbatical from his job in Zurich.

Although the caatinga has a long history of isolation, poverty, and exploitation, Pons found the 4,000-person fishing village in the midst of a renaissance, transforming itself into a thriving resort town. Where the caatinga meets the ocean, it turns out, consistently hot equatorial temperatures and southeasterly trade winds are the stuff of epic wind-surfing vacations.

While Pons was enjoying his respite, he was perhaps unwittingly drumming up business. One acquaintance asked him to sketch a house; a fellow visitor from Switzerland wondered whether Pons would conceive a courtyard residence from scratch. He apprised Matteo Arnone, his best friend from Accademia di Architettura Mendrisio, of the opportunities that had found him. The news prompted Arnone to want to experience the energy for himself, and the same day that Arnone stepped off the plane, Pons’s Swiss prospect greenlit the commission. The buddies established Atelier Branco Arquitetura to get it done.

Though they had based themselves some 1,800 miles away in São Paulo, the newly minted partners maintained strong ties to São Miguel do Gostoso, working on the courtyard residence and developing their own 12-unit condominium. "We could spend a week or even just a weekend there, but we also could stay for more than four weeks," Pons recalls of going back and forth. "We needed a place to be and work."