Dear Senhor Vega,

Your sketch arrived this morning, and I have spent the afternoon studying it. The courtyard is brilliant—you have understood something essential about the Brazilian house, which is that life happens between rooms, not within them. The Portuguese colonial sobrado always had a central pátio, and you have reinvented this not as nostalgia but as a genuinely modern space.

However, I must take issue with your roof. A flat Catalan terrace will not survive a São Paulo summer. The rains here are tropical—they do not fall so much as they descend, in sheets, for hours. I recommend a slight pitch, even if it compromises the purity of your line. Gaudí would have understood this. Nature does not negotiate.

I am also sending you a copy of my article on the fazenda houses of the Paraíba Valley. The veranda, which you dismissed as colonial ornament, is in fact a sophisticated climatic device. Consider it.

With warm regards,
Miriam Costa