The first drawing of Alto Sereno was not a building. It was a survey: 38 hectares of hillside reduced to lines one metre apart. Before anyone asked where a house might go, we asked where the land was already level enough to stand.

That question shaped everything after it. Roads follow the gentlest gradients. Homes sit where the slope pauses. Where the contours tighten, we left the hillside alone.

A few degrees matter

Follow a contour and no two plots face quite the same way. Each villa is rotated slightly from the next, which does something a planted screen never fully manages: it gives each terrace its own view and nobody else's.

We did not design privacy. We found it in the shape of the hill.

The result is a plan that looks loose from above and feels precise on the ground. You notice it most at dusk, when the lights come on and you realise you cannot see into a single neighbouring room.

What it costs, and what it returns

Building this way is slower. Foundations vary plot by plot and no two homes share an identical section. In return, far less earth leaves the site, mature trees stay where they are, and the homes look as if they have been here for some time.