CONTENTS
STACKED VOLUMES 12+1
THE LONG HOUSE 37
DETAIL AND REDEMPTION 67
HORIZONTOLOGY 81
BEHIND THE IMAGE 103
THE JOYFUL HOUSE 125
USELESS PORTRAIT 133
NOTES 141
IMAGES 145
AFTERWORD by Emilio Faroldi 149
STACKED VOLUMES
Ambiguity, when it appears, gets to us. It moves something inside us. We glimpse a mystery. We feel we are not looking at the work of a mere professional, but instead we are inside the creation of an “author,” moving and walking on the inclined, capsized plane of his poetics. It happens at the movies, in literature, and also in architecture. We look at the minimalist spaces and walls of Barragán and we are swept away by their dream-like way of taking on colors like pink, yellow and blue. We look at the bricks of the later Lewerentz and we feel challenged by their dispersal, widening, bending, defying any rules of bricklaying. We see the shaded poetic structuralism of Solano Benítez take form, the slow growth of the arcane, haughty collection of Peter Zumthor, the birth out of nowhere of the ectoplasmic lightness of the latest Japanese entry, or the cold, cynical beauty of some Swiss talent. We feel small, intimidated, uncomfortable. In the face of all these strange things, we say to ourselves, with confidence: “this is an author.” We are so conventionally accustomed to an authorial stance asserted through ambiguity and mystery that if we do not see its dour visage our attention begins to drift. The work might be handsome, but it is not challenging, our interest flags, our senses lose their receptive capacity. Then we become blind, and we no longer see Kogan. We think he is commercial and we look at him in a superficial way. We see that his spaces are beautiful, we imagine living inside them, we associate them with the infinite hedonistic images of luxury living, but we don’t see his authorship. The fascinating complexity of his figure escapes us. So Kogan lives in the world of the image, of public success and critical neglect. Yet he is actually one of the few architects that can honestly be called an author. His authorial character has depth, and can be
12+1
STACKED VOLUMES
2. A volume at ground level, closed, oblong and rotated by 90°, slides below the iconic volume of the first floor and extends towards a lush garden, closing one side and forming an L-shaped plan on two levels. 3. Under the iconic volume, in the part not occupied by the closed segment, a glass space is generated, an indoor-outdoor hybrid. The windows open completely and can be hidden in specially designed imperceptible architectural recesses. This anti-objectual space presents itself as the opposite of the volume on the first floor, and besides offering a reinterpretation of the Brazilian tradition of the veranda, it suggests an oriental approach to space and the architecture of relations.
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STACKED VOLUMES
4. A third volume, closed and compact, very abstract and often clad in a single material, seems to rest on the flat roof of the main volume; this portion on the second floor is set back on all sides from the edge of the iconic volume, repeating its planimetric form on a smaller scale, making it take on a secondary role, almost like a cap. Object and anti-object From this initial interpretation we can start to know the different components that form the model, deducing their roles in the system and learning the rules that organize their assembly. But to understand the mechanisms behind the efficacy of the design system with greater intensity, we need to get beyond this merely mechanical level and analyze the predominant core of the system. In this apparent compositional calm there is a center of tension that must first be identified and then analyzed. Studying the model through a second interpretation, we can easily see that the concatenation of the parts could not achieve its forceful effect were it not enlivened by the expressive, charged dialogue that takes form between the opposites of the iconic volume on the first floor (1) and the open hybrid space of the ground floor (3). In this relationship, two discordant approaches to architecture seem to enter a strategic, balanced opposition, suggesting one of the most problematic dichotomies of Modernism: the relationship between the object and the anti-object. According to some, the strong line of Modernism arises and develops from the cult of the architectural object, as opposed to the subject.2 Two of the most famous buildings of the 20th century, Villa Savoye by Le Corbusier (perched on pilotis with its primary forms) and the Barcelona Pavilion of Mies van der Rohe
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1. The P House (2012) represents the apex of the experimentation conducted by Marcio Kogan and Studio mk27 on the compositional theme of the house made of stacked volumes. In this work three different rectangular volumes slide over each other, rotated by 90°. The elegance of the details, the quality of the finishes and the warm domestic atmosphere soften the perception of the virtuoso construction behind the project.
THE LONG HOUSE
If an invisible boundary exists beyond which the series sinks into sterile repetition, Kogan and Studio mk27 know it only too well. They approach it, they play nearby like kids on the edge of a cliff, but when the time has come to move away and the danger increases, they look elsewhere, heading for new architectural worlds. Kogan and his team possess that rare intuition regarding the periodic necessity of change that every artist who works in cycles must cultivate in order to conserve the ability to glimpse, in the growing round of applause, the inevitable and dangerous seed of creative regression. So just as we were getting accustomed to imagining the architect from São Paulo safe and sound in the protective haven of his urban houses with stacked volumes, he was already exploring the expansive territory of the long house, in the grip of a new passion that would lead him to create a series of houses of great impact, always on a single level, no longer elevated above the ground but attached to it, spreading in the landscape, as the result of the liberating choice to cast aside any reluctance to delve into his love for dilated spaces: Punta House (2008-11), Lee House (2008-12), MM House (2008-12), Mororò House (2011-14), Cutaçaba Farm (2010-11). An ode to the horizon in five acts, a surprising response to new requests to design houses in a spatial context free of limitations, in the open countryside, away from the urban cage of São Paulo.5 The new lots and new projects pose a range of different questions. There is no longer the need to condense everything, to make it vertical, to raise iconic volumes off the ground in order to liberate the urban dance of tropical gardens as he had in the past, and before him Vilanova Artigas or Mendes da Rocha. Kogan, faced with these new contexts, drastically changes his approach. He abandons that system of composition in stacked parts and volumes that had established the image of Studio mk276, but he does not abandon composition. He still needs the ordering force of a logical system of
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THE LONG HOUSE
assembly in order to avoid the pitfalls of the arbitrary and of loss of equilibrium. He selects the model of the “long house,� designing five markedly flattened single volumes, inside which he proceeds with his typical composition of parts, leading him to split the functional program into concatenated and recognizable blocks. In the long plan the game of assembly we have seen in the houses with stacked volumes shifts from the outside to the inside of the single body that sets these works apart, and is structured through precise groupings and alignments that offer an intriguing indoor version of the composition made of multiple parts.
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THE LONG HOUSE
Murcutt, Fehn and Kogan. Permanence and variation Kogan and Studio mk27 do not start from scratch. The model of the long house is not new. Traces of this compositional system exist in the works of outstanding architects built in different places, far from Brazil. Careful examination of the plans of the five houses helps us to recognize systems already seen and interpreted multiple times in the works of Glenn Murcutt in Australia, or the formalist metal boxes of his countryman Sean Godsell. But systems of this type can also be found in the fascinating earlier projects of Craig Ellwood, where the spaces of the long plan are invaded by the California sunshine, or in the works of Sverre Fehn where they are poetically transfigured by the pallor of Nordic light. In all these experiments conducted by great masters of architecture the basic model remains recognizably the same. If we compare the plans of the Mororò House (2011-14) by Kogan and the Meagher House (1988-92) by Glenn Murcutt, we notice that the compositional nature of the main part of the two houses is identical. These one-story residences have a plan formed by a very oblong rectangle that extends in the landscape, while inside they are organized with different spatial nuclei. The first nucleus (A) is constituted by a lateral path that runs along the side of one of the two very long exterior walls and functions as the sole system of connection for all the spaces of the residence. The second nucleus (B) rests on the lateral wall of the opposite side and presents itself as a block that contains all the functions that demand greater privacy (bedrooms and bathrooms). The third nucleus (C) is formed by a terminal space that extends across the width of the plan. This contains the living area and the more social functions of both the houses. The kitchen becomes the end of the block of secondary functions (nucleus B) and directly faces the living area (nucleus C) with a typical Murcutt balcony, placed against the wall of the office. The circulation way also converges in this final widened space, where all the dynamic tensions of the house come to rest. There are also other resemblances: the living area is connected to an external terrace (D) that begins in alignment with the end of the block of secondary functions and extends laterally well beyond the living area itself, and at the opposite ends of the two houses there are two ulterior spaces (E).
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14. The MM House (2008-12), the third experiment on the theme of the long house, appears as a single volume extending on the lot and marked by a double-pitch roof covered with grass. Below the long slab two wooden volumes can be opened, containing all the secondary functions and the bedroom zone. 15. Between the two wooden segments of the MM House a passage guarantees cross ventilation and extends towards the landscape with a platform that leads to the dramatic swimming pool.
35. The striking horizontal character of the Planar House at Porto Feliz.
36. Constructed at Itatiba, in the countryside of SĂŁo Paulo at the highest level of a steep slope, the Redux House (2009-13) is like an ode to horizontality, producing an intense dialogue between lush nature and the absolute lines of the architecture.
44. A selection of photographs on a central axis that narrate the calculated dualism of the architecture of Studio mk27.