Architectural Digest recently completed a photo shoot and article on the “Isle Esme” home used for in the filming of Breaking Dawn. Here is an excerpt from the article and the photos.
“Thiago Bernardes of Rio de Janeiro designed a rustic beach house for the Fernandes family on the Brazilian fjord of Saco do Mamanguá. The area is so remote that the family can only reach its house by boat or helicopter”.
“A view into the double-height living room from the veranda. Pivoting doors allow sea breezes to pass through the house”.
“Wood steps lead up from the garden onto the broad veranda, which integrates the house and the surrounding landscape”.
“The walls and ceiling of the master bedroom are covered in woven-straw panels, the work of artisans in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais”.
Halfway between São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, off the BR-101 highway, lies a corner of Brazil bounded by forested mountains that edge their way down to the sea. The Saco do Mamanguá, a tropical fjord, cuts between the mainland and the peninsula of Juatinga, where ridges approaching 1,600 feet frame a narrow bay; this pristine spot is where businessman Ícaro Fernandes, his wife, Cristina, and their five children, ranging in age from three to 24, come to trade life in the urban jungle of São Paulo for waterskiing and dolphin-watching. On weekends, the clan braves São Paulo’s notorious traffic to make the nearly three-hour drive to the colonial town of Paraty, where they hop onto a speedboat for the short ride to their beachfront home
Fernandes and his family got to know Saco do Mamanguá in 2001, when they visited friends who owned a house in the area, and they eventually decided to buy a 99-acre property on one of the inlet’s loveliest beaches. Fernandes, a real-estate developer who also owns a food-import business, had long admired the work of Brazilian architects Bernardes + Jacobsen, lauded for their imaginative tropical-modern houses. So he called on the firm—now headed by Thiago Bernardes, son of the late Claudio Bernardes and grandson of Sergio Bernardes (1919–2002), and Paulo Jacobsen, partner to all three generations—to design his family’s retreat. “My father and Paulo were constantly researching how to build with natural materials and with an economy of resources—for example, trying to understand how fishermen built their simple wood shelters and how to integrate good natural ventilation into a house,” explains Thiago Bernardes. “That’s the vision Ícaro asked us to incorporate into his home.”
To read the entire article and see all the photos click here : Architectural Digest
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