Carla Juaçaba initially didn’t believe the news. She had just found out that she had been chosen to build one of 10 “Vatican Chapels”—loosely built structures in a park that served as the Vatican’s first-ever entry in the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2018. The Brazilian architect took two days to respond to the invitation. Unable to travel in advance to see the project (she was tethered to her home country with a baby), she had to rely on the images provided—and her mind.
“I could imagine this garden and behind the garden, the vibrance of Venice,” said Juaçaba. “The chapel is like a stage design; as you go and you sit there, it’s like an event. It’s not a sculpture, it’s not an installation, it is architecture.”
Since the beginning of her career, Juaçaba has invoked other disciplines in her work. Now, more than 20 years into her practice, the celebrated architect continues to resist a siloed approach to her field.
The 48-year-old architect’s life has changed since the chapel project—one of a series of creative challenges she refers to as “golden opportunities”—but juggling different time zones, countries, and continents remains a fixture of her work. Juaçaba currently resides in Paris, but spends half her week in Switzerland as an associate professor at the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio. In her studio practice, she works on both private and public projects.
Juaçaba was born in Rio de Janeiro and founded her solo practice there in 2000. While studying architecture and urbanism at Santa Úrsula University, she considered working in exhibition design before embarking on a career in architecture. Her grandmother, Heloísa Ferreira Juaçaba, was a multidisciplinary artist who exhibited at the São Paulo Biennial and formed a strong presence in the younger Juaçaba’s childhood. At university, multimedia artist Lygia Pape was a favourite professor.
Regularly taking inspiration from artists and exhibition design, she created her 2012 Pavilion Humanidade with filmmaker and theatre director Bia Lessa. The pavilion was built for Rio+20, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, and was composed largely of building scaffolding open to the elements. Speaking of her cultural influences, Juaçaba said: “The limits are invented. We need so much to put labels on everything, which is annoying. I think you can also include a mix of a lot of things [in a project].”
Initially Juaçaba established her reputation working on homes for private clients. She undertook Rio Bonito House (2005), Varanda House (2007), and Santa Teresa House (2012), among others. All of these projects were modest in budget and scale, with the houses measuring 140 square metres or less. Each design worked to integrate the homes into the landscapes surrounding them, treading lightly on their environments. She won the inaugural arcVision – Women and Architecture prize in 2013, and the Architectural Review’s Emerging Architecture Award in 2018.
Yet Juaçaba dismisses the idea that her work champions sustainability, arguing that sustainability is a necessary response and should be intrinsic to the economy of any project. “I always talk about foundations when I talk about projects,” says Juaçaba. “The first action is to do a foundation. It’s the last drawing, but can be the first start. How much do we transform a territory?”
For Juaçaba, the transformation of actual ground is often minimal. A current project, Flor de Café, is for an association of coffee producers in Brazil. Her designs are based on a modular structure that can be adapted as needs shift and grow. The project includes designing a museum dedicated to the history of coffee in the country, with a focus on deforestation and the effects of colonization, as well as a tasting space and a school. Juaçaba is employing inexpensive structures made of eucalyptus wood and sheet metal cladding that integrate with the landscape.
Her time is a precious resource. Currently, she is spending many hours on trains, travelling to and from teaching, coupled with hours spent conferencing with clients in Brazil. She is also frank about the limitations parenting places on her personal practice and how some female architects continue to confront additional barriers. She also laments the gender imbalance among architecture professors, though the number of female students flooding into the field gives her hope.
Juaçaba’s Biennale chapel on the southern tip of San Giorgio Maggiore Island is a sparse design of four polished steel beams that form a bench and a cross. The beams rest on seven thin pieces of concrete. Its minimalism, coupled with the reflective steel, allows the structure seemingly to disappear into the foliage, depending on the light and time of day. The chapels were curated by Francesco Dal Co, and, while initially temporary, have been made permanent and declared part of Italian heritage. Under Italian law they are recognized as artistic works.
For a current private client, Juaçaba is wrapping a house in São Paulo in mirrors, transforming the home into an object, and again blurring boundaries between architecture and art. Her design is an installation of mirrors that fold over an existing modernist house from the 1970s and extend within the interior of the space. The installation is part of an exhibition to showcase the house to the public. “If it’s private, there has to be connection with the client, there has to be some trust,” says Juaçaba. “But I’m lucky that they are quite open. It’s very nice when there is affinity, when there is no affinity, I just stop.”
