Hostel Villa 25, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil by C+P Arquitetura

Rodrigo Calvino and Diego Portas work on the basis of ‘invented opportunity’, working against the tide of adverse conditions for architectural practice. They started C+P in 2008, when they gained the chance to design and build the H Niterói Hotel – doing so with the argument that they could increase the proposed number of beds by 15 per cent. ‘We don’t talk to clients about our architectural interests; we try to use their language’, Portas explains. C+P talk numbers, maximising profits, implementing a strategy they call the ‘trojan horse’, in which intelligently considered architecture is smuggled in under the wing of the free market. The client for the hotel later called on C+P to evaluate how many beds could be worked into the conversion of a 19th-century house into a hostel. The result was Hostel Villa 25, completed in 2016; the conversion was added to by a new building at the back of the site. C+P were able to create a courtyard and dining area, stripping the function of the bedrooms back to focus on sleep, and drawing the living spaces into communal areas to emphasise the collective way of living evoked by the hostel as type. The hostel makes clear the weight C+P give to the section, as beds are lofted over corridors – this gesture also making reference to Paulo Mendes da Rocha’s Jaraguá building. The circulation is inverted to echo an Argentinian type, and windows hidden in plan are inspired by contemporary Japanese architecture: references abound, a densely critical attitude to design is in evidence.