Those prone to seasickness usually miss out on the experience of seeing the horizon from the prow of a ship, but Atelier Marko Brajovic has brought that view to dry land with a new cabin in Brazil. Casa Prao, or “Bow House,” mimics a seafaring vibe by jutting one corner of its triangular form over a private beach. The architects drew inspiration from Buckminster Fuller’s fascination with the tetrahedron, a four-sided pyramid, to give this tiny elevated cabin a sense of geometric order.

As Buckminster Fuller himself explained, the tetrahedron represents “the minimum system of the Universe, and it turned out to be, then, omni-triangulated and we found that structures are always triangulated. Structure meant triangle and triangle meant structure, there were no other stable polygons. Therefore, the tetrahedron turned out to be the minimum structural system of the Universe.”
The tetrahedron is Fuller’s model of the simplest three-dimensional geometric system that can be used as the basis for other shapes, like his famous geodesic domes. He called this “cosmic logic of the structural mathematics strategies of nature,” which he spent much of his life studying and defining under the name “Synergetics.” In the case of Bow House, the tetrahedron helps to create a stable base for the cabin, takes full advantage of the small plot of land, and gives it an interesting silhouette.

“Casa Proa (Bow House in portugues) was...