Renata Figueiredo spent eleven years working as a structural engineer in Sao Paulo, mostly on commercial towers in Pinheiros and Vila Olimpia. She was good at the work. She was also, by her own account, exhausted by it in a way that a long weekend could not fix. In the winter of 2017 she drove up to Campos do Jordao alone, rented a small cabin for four days, and did not open her laptop once. She came back the following month. And the month after that.
The land that would become Patch SDK was purchased in early 2018, a 4.2-hectare plot on the upper road toward Abernesia with a collapsed farmhouse at its centre and a stand of old-growth araucaria along the northern boundary. Renata spent the better part of a year working with a local builder, Seu Marcos from Sao Bento do Sapucai, to design four cabins that would sit lightly on the slope. The first two, Cedro and Araucaria, opened in June 2019. Pedra followed in 2021. Pinheiro, the cabin with the hot tub, was finished in March 2023 using reclaimed peroba wood from a demolition project nearby.
