The ‘Star House’ is exemplary and unique in the world in its form and purpose. After serving as housing for the Castro Family in the Alto da Glória neighborhood in Curitiba, it was dismantled, transported, restored and rebuilt at PUCPR Câmpus Curitiba. Today, it is part of the PUC Paraná Cultural Center. Its main objective is the preservation of the memory of a saga and of the architectural and engineering heritage of the wood.
Built in the 1930s, it witnessed from a distance the world economic crisis with the fall of the New York Stock Exchange, bankruptcy of banks and totalitarian movements in several European countries. Closer, he saw the Constitutionalist Revolution of 1932 and the new Brazilian Constitution of 1934. It was in this international and national context that the realization of a dream began. The Paranaense Augusto Gonçalves de Castro devoted himself wholeheartedly to the Universal Fraternity, drawing on the international Esperanto language of communication and the knowledge that brings together science, philosophy and religion known as Theosophy.
After working as an accountant in a Scottish company, with few tools and a carbide lamp, Mr. Augusto worked late, without electricity, and with the assistance of only his wife Dionysia Azulay de Castro. Using six-meter-long pine boards (Araucaria Angustifolia) he managed to erect two floors. The natural growth of the family and the willingness to share their self-taught knowledge, Augustus managed to live in a basement of minimal height. Ali taught German, drawing, Esperanto, French, Greek, Latin and mathematics.
The most notable of the Casa Estrela is its implantation on a regular pentagon, according to the mathematics of Pythagoras of Samos, easily revealing the comprehension of the series of numbers of Leonardo of Pisa Fibonacci and the Theory of Divine Proportion of Fra Luca Paccioli. Inside there are no doors; only in the rooms. The central mezzanine allows the free communication of its users, today visitors.