Simplicity Speaks Volumes: The work of Marcio Kogan and Studio mk27

Brazilian architect Marcio Kogan is one of the hottest designers around today. With striking cantilevered buildings that are seamlessly aligned with modernist gardens and minimalist interiors, the multidisciplinary team at Studio mk27 in São Paolo shows us the heights that a dedication to simplicity and collaboration can achieve.

Apart from his prodigious creativity, Kogan can attribute some of his success to following traditions established by great Brazilian modernist architects and designers like João Filgueiras Lima, Oscar Niemeyer, and Lucio Costa. These predecessors from the early 1930s to 1950s were on a mission to transform Brazil into a fully modernized nation and to create an architectural expression uniquely tied to Brazil’s culture, climate, and people.

Architects like Costa, who was born in France and trained in Europe, wanted to reinterpret Brazil’s colonial architecture and indigenous elements to express modernist sensibilities. Lima, affectionately known in Brazil as Lelé, was not only a highly sculptural architect, but also a pioneer in using passive building systems to minimize energy use. In his Sarah Kubitschek Hospital, Lima used glass-lined corridors and light sheds (rooftop structures that direct light down into a building) to provide natural light to most of the hospital areas and brise soleil (screens that provide both shade and air flow), cross ventilation, ventilation tunnels, and roof vents to moderate the heat and humidity inside the buildings.

Following in the footsteps of his mentors, Kogan exhibits a fearlessness in his work – an ability to create strong and definitive forms that wrap around living spaces, yet allow for an activity and visual flow between the indoor and outdoor spaces. He borrows mashrabiyas (wood latticework screens) from the Brazilian colonial style, which in turn adopted the ancient use of window screens for privacy, solar shading, and ventilation from the Arabic-speaking world.

Kogan believes in a simple approach to sustainability. Rather than relying on the very latest gadgets to optimize electrical usage, Kogan’s designs apply common-sense knowledge to adapt to the local climate and find the most aesthetic and sustainable uses of indigenous materials. His design philosophy, which he shares with his team at Studio mk27, is not only about the aesthetics of a building, but also about creating comfortable environments.

Studio mk27 has developed its own “language” of architecture to express its design intent. It’s a language that speaks volumes through the unmistakable style of its projects, which combine materials and building components in such a way that they translate into a coherent and striking statement. If one thinks of the materials and the parts of the building as words and their relationship to each other as syntax, i.e., rules and patterns, the language analogy becomes clear. Kogan communicates by creating various moods and responses for different sites and clients. His genius is in understanding that meaning derives not just from the intention of the architect, but also from the ability of viewers to recognize the intention, as well as the symbolism, through the filter of their own memories and experiences.

Kogan’s architectural language is continually changing in subtle ways and in response to locale, as you’ll see in four of his recent residential projects. Although not his newest work, they represent a range and breadth of Studio mk27’s style and language. All of the projects are in Brazil.

CHIMNEY HOUSE

The Chimney House in São Paulo was completed in February 2009. Kogan recently told wallpaper.com that he is “addicted” to São Paulo. “It’s one of the most interesting cities in the world. It is absolutely chaotic, ugly, polluted, and any other unpleasant adjectives one might imagine, but with energy that is absolutely fantastic and unparalleled. The mixture of everything creates a unique and impassioned personality.”

With enclosed gardens that are serene and quiet, the Chimney House provides a haven from the almost anarchic energy Kogan describes, yet it echoes that exuberance with the varied shapes of its chimneys. The design of the house embraces three simple elements: a wooden patio with trees, the shape the house takes on by wrapping around the patio, and a simple but massive wall that makes up a side of the house. Floors seem to extend seamlessly from the interior to the exterior decks. Large rectangular openings, some of which extend the entire length of the building, are a prominent feature. Kogan heightens an illusion of transparency with enormous sliding-glass “walls” that can be pushed back to open up the space.

The living room, which is a one-story block at one end of the garden, comprises one leg of the L-shaped building. The proportions are long and low to give a sense of intimacy. Its horizontality is echoed in the shape of the room, the linearity of the wood floor, and the imprint of the narrow wooden formwork that was used in constructing the cast concrete ceiling.

The other leg of the L is a two-story structure with additional common living spaces, including a kitchen and TV room, on the lower floor and three bedrooms on the upper level. A sliding wood brise soleil filters the light coming through small windows and allows air to circulate. A sundeck over the living room features a large fire pit for barbecues and night lighting.

CASA CORTEN

Named for the corten weathering steel used on the front facade of the house, Casa Corten presents from the street a textured, monolithic slab behind a semi-transparent wooden screen wall. It is both Japanese and Brazilian in spirit and aesthetic, and it expresses another element of Kogan’s design language: the contrasting of materials and textures in unexpected ways. Here the corten steel is used in counterpoint to stonework laid in an irregular rectangular patchwork and to the house’s rich red-gold wood tones and white plaster.

Because Casa Corten is near one of the largest parks in São Paulo and the house sits on a long, narrow lot, the owners limited the exterior living areas to a slim deck at the ground level and a deck and garden on the roof. Inside, the house features a large, high-ceilinged room on the ground floor that opens up to the small garden. A sculptural wood-clad box provides a screen for the kitchen and divides the first floor into a living room, a kitchen, and a dining and seating area. Furnishings are low and long to accentuate the height and volume of the space. A simple white accent rug and wall-hung cabinets help to further define the living space. Recessed down and up-lights, set slightly away from the two longest walls, are the primary interior illumination and create a dramatic pattern of light and shadow that extends the length of the room.

Built-in stairs behind the kitchen enclosure lead up to a mezzanine home theater directly above the kitchen and overlooking the living/dining area. From there, another set of stairs takes you to the bedrooms on the third floor. One more flight of stairs and you’re on a glass-railed roof deck with a pool and views of the city.

LARANJEIRAS HOUSE

Fifteen kilometers from the historic city of Paraty, which is located along the Atlantic coastline, south of Rio de Janeiro on the border of São Paolo and Rio states, Laranjeiras House echoes Paraty’s colonial architecture with its combination of recycled ceramic tile, wood, and other rustic elements. These materials offer “great thermal isolation”, says Kogan, whose design for the house was greatly influenced by ecological concerns. To increase energy efficiency and interior comfort during the hot, humid “Carioca” days, (Carioca is Brazilian slang for the inhabitants and the state of Rio de Janeiro), the main rooms of the house have cross ventilation. The living room leads to a garden on one side and a pool and the beach on the other.

On the upper floors, the bedrooms open onto an encircling terrace whose roof shades the rooms from the tropical sun, as do the latticed mashrabiyas. Kogan explains that the textures and openings are a type of “poetic discourse” in which the architecture is “in dialog with modernism, colonial architecture…and above all else, the remarkable houses of [Paraty].”

CASA PANAMÁ

For this project, Studio mk27 took traditional Brazilian building materials – wood and stone – and contrasted them against more modern construction materials, such as reinforced concrete and plastic. A true combination of old and new, Casa Panamá was specifically designed to house the client’s important collection of modern Brazilian art, which is scattered throughout the house, from the bedrooms to the garden and in specially designed exhibit areas

The mk27 team chose every construction detail carefully and even custom-designed some of the furniture for Casa Panamá, which is located in a garden neighborhood a few blocks from Paulista, the financial center of the city of São Paolo. The art accents the architecture, and the architecture embraces and enhances the art. For example, the in-house gallery contains pivoting wall panels to divide or open up the interior space, much like a museum. The living room has cozy gathering spaces that contrast with the openness of the garden, which features a reflecting pool that runs parallel to an enclosing wall built in a traditional colonial pattern with local stone.

As in all of Studio mk27’s work, light is pivotal to the design of Casa Panamá. It is filtered, shaded, directed, and played with in myriad ways to create ever-changing moods. This creative use of light allows us to experience the house’s transparency, translucence, pattern, and shadow, all of which are the architecture and the life of the space.

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