A Medellin house offers art, brutalism and drama

This Medellin House is an ode to tropical modernism, located in the mountains outside the Colombian city, and takes its name from the places dedicated to breeding the country’s much-desired Paso Fino horses. A potent collaboration between its owner, Colombian interior designer Karlos Pérez, and architecture studio 5 Sólidos, there’s an element of the Trojan horse in Casa Haras, a 780 sq m home that is both fortress-like and ethereal, monumentally brutalist yet wonderfully enticing.

After passing through the fissure that breaches its black aluminium-clad façade, visitors are greeted by a wondrous world of contrasts that blur the lines between inside and outside, art and architecture. Situated at the subtle transition between exterior and interior is a bronze sculpture by Richard MacDonald, a masculine figure that greets visitors with arms outstretched, gazing upwards to the skies and bathing in the light of a dramatic oculus.

A Medellin house blends art and brutalism

Beyond its decorative function, MacDonald’s sculpture, and others by Danilo Cuadros, Andrés Layos and Julian Voss-Andreae, contrast with the house’s geometrical purity. ‘It was clear that the goal was for the house itself to be a sculpture,’ says María José Fernández, co-founder of 5 Sólidos, who was charged with bringing physical form to Pérez’s poetic vision, creating a cinematic canvas for his artistic universe. ‘We decided to keep the design as clean as possible so that when scaling it to large volumes, the materiality wouldn’t work against us,’ she says.

Adding to the sculptural theme, a spiral staircase serves as a pivot for the otherwise angular aesthetic. Positioned in the centre of the house, the monumental stairway to heaven provides a celestial link between the common areas and the upper floor bedrooms, pinning together the house’s two rectangular volumes like the hands of a monumental clock. A 35m-long body, on a north-south axis, overlaps perpendicularly with the smaller, 25m-long body below to create a composition that reads differently from all angles.

Almost 4m in diameter, the oak veneer-clad staircase took artisans 90 days to complete. ‘It’s the heart of the house, and follows the Fibonacci spiral that repeats throughout nature – in shells, in plants, in the universe itself,’ says Pérez. The staircase provides a dramatic counterpoint to the home’s other defining feature, a V-shaped concrete column that supports the striking overhang of the upper body and permits the living and dining area to open out fully to the verdant mountain scenery at ground level.

Plunging into the pool, lined with black Bali stone tiles to reflect the play of light as it passes over its surface, the column composition represents ‘victory, dreams and stability’, themes that, according to Pérez, resonate throughout the project. The dark hues of the tiles reference the blackness of the Rio Negro, which backs on to the property and gives its name to the municipality that is home to most of Medellín’s most luxurious residences. The garden is also dotted with monumental rocks, plucked from local rivers for their energising properties, and native plants selected by landscape company Arte Natural Paisajismo, creating what Pérez calls ‘a vibrant environment that combines the natural with the modern’.

The house’s raw concrete interiors contrast with the more elaborate exterior cladding. Even the roof was treated with the same careful consideration as the façades – covered in stone sourced from local rivers, it creates an unexpected fifth elevation that aligns with the five platonic solids that give the architecture studio its name. According to Fernández, ‘design is rarely thought from above. That’s why we gave the roof the same importance as the other four façades’. Aluminium shuttering, painted to replicate the wood used throughout the house, softens the lighting and casts shadows as the sun passes overhead. Furniture by Paola Lenti and B&B Italia was chosen by Pérez to soften the otherwise brutalist interiors.

It’s in the passage from day to night that Casa Haras reveals its dual nature most clearly; as a place for profound reflection, it is both a powerful architectural statement and an intimate family home. ‘The sturdiness gives a sense of security, but it also represents how important and beautiful it is to be located in one’s own centre,’ says Pérez. Since shaping his dream home with 5 Sólidos, he has assembled his own team of architects in Miami to launch his design studio, Studio KP2, with a second brutalist project due to complete later this year.  

cincosolidos.com

studiokp2.com

This article appears in the May 2025 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on newsstands from 3 April 2025, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today