Anderson Cooper first visited the Trancoso, Brazil in 2013 on vacation with his partner, nightlife impresario Benjamin Maisani, and pal Andy Cohen.

“Within a day I was fantasizing about buying a house there. Ben thought I’d lost my mind, and Andy, who is encouraging about almost everything, thought I was nuts, too.

I put my bags down in the bungalow where we were staying, I walked out onto the porch overlooking the Quadrado, the town square, and I just watched for a couple of hours. In the late afternoon, the kids started playing soccer, the horsemen began to return from the fields, and the lights came on in the little fishermen’s cottages. It’s hard to explain the attraction, but I just sat there, spellbound.”

It’s a 14-hour trip, changing planes and traveling by car to get there, so he MUST love it.

“… I’ve worked in 70 countries and traveled to even more, and I’ve never seen anything like Trancoso. It’s a real place, not a Potemkin village for tourists.

Most people want homes on the beach, but you can find beautiful beaches all over the world. The Quadrado is what makes this place so singularly compelling. I had to be there.”

Cooper managed to find the perfect designer, and local real-estate expert in Wilbert Das who arrived in Brazil seven years ago, after resigning from his role as creative director of Diesel. Cooper enlisted Das to build him a home which ended up being four separate buildings; the main structure’s living/dining room, two guest cottages and the master suite which sits on stilts.

Brazilian landscape designer Juliana Favarato made it all look like its been here for decades and Das made a hollowed-out tree trunk into an outdoor shower. The master bath’s double shower looks out onto a covered terrace. It all looks like sexy, relaxed perfection –just like a certain newsman.

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(Photos, Simon Upton; via Architectural Digest)