[Para a versão em português clique aqui]
A few years back I had the opportunity to visit the freshly built house of my good friend Helena Montanarini, widely recognized as an arbiter of style in Brazil. Like most properties in the Jardim America section of São Paulo, the front facade was barely visible behind the six foot-tall gate that protected it. The implied sense of a need for protection, however, vanished immediately upon entering. A long box with towering ceilings, culminating in a wall of 20 foot pivoting glass doors looking out onto a single yellow ipe tree, the house is an oasis of calm. The mix of stone, wood, concrete, and glass brought to mind the Neutra houses I had visited only through photos. “Who designed this?” I asked her. “Marcio Kogan. He’s a genius,” was all she replied. After two years of badgering Helena for an introduction, I finally had the opportunity in September to meet Marcio and to visit his studio in São Paulo. - Geoff Cook, partner, Base.
Base: Describe yourself.
Marcio Kogan: We’re beginning with a question that’s impossible to answer, but the most important thing about me is that I wear glasses.
B: Before getting into architecture, you studied cinema. How was that experience and the transition into architecture?
MK: I lost my father when I was 8 years old and from that moment on, my life became a black and white film. At 17, I went and saw “The Silence” by Ingmar Bergman, and I found myself moved as I realized all my feelings were magically projected onto that white screen. For the first time I realized what “art” meant. I left the movie theater seeing the world in color again. I start being obsessed by cinema. During my architecture years, I was also producing short movies and doing both careers at the same time. In 1998, I finished the feature film “Fire & Passion” and realized my life would be in architecture, especially due to the incredible difficulty of doing cinema in Brazil.
B: What (or who) influenced your work early on in your career? And today?
MK: I ended up having a multidisciplinary formation, and after graduating, I found myself not influenced by architects, but by various areas and figures such as Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Andy Warhol and the french director Jacques Tati.
B: Is there a specific type of project you prefer to take on? (Example: private houses vs. commercial spaces)
MK: I don’t have a preference. I’d rather design a little crib for someone that I love than a big building in Park Avenue for someone I have no connection with. Maybe that’s why my studio is small, but I like that.
B: Brazil has gone through a past “Golden Age” in many creative areas: the 50′s-70′s with music, Cinema Novo, and of course the modernist era in architecture, with names such as Oscar Niemeyer and Lucio Costa. Coming from this past “fame and glory” period. How do you see Brazilian architecture today?
MK: Brazilian music doesn’t need any commentary. Antonio Carlos Jobim, Caetano Veloso, João Gilberto, Rita Lee, Chico Buarque, Marisa Monte and so many other names are pure genius.
As for architecture, I am am ardent follower of the modernist Brazilian movement that started in the 30′s and was absolutely sensational. Names such as Lucio Costa (who did the Guinle Park and the Health Ministry building), Oscar Niemeyer (Canoas House and Oca in the Ibirapuera Park), Affonso Reidy (Pedregulho), Rino Levi (bank in Sul Americano), Lina Bo Bardi (Glass House), Vilanova Artigas (Louveira Building), amongst others, realized incredible work. It’s so interesting and hard to understand how a country like Brazil, in a time where there was almost no flow of information, had so many architects and musicians producing a range of work of such magnitude. My work humbly revisits this magical moment. After a period of darkness, in virtue of a storm and recession known as the “lost generation,” we are back to having various architects producing great work. The justified international acknowledgment of Paulo Mendes da Rocha is proof of that.
B: Is there a building you would like to have done? And why?
MK: Obviously the Barcelona Pavilion. It’s the great masterpiece of modernist architecture.
B: And on the other end, if you could chose one building to pull apart, demolish, and erase from people’s memories, what would it be?
MK: 99% of the city of São Paulo.
B: You work mostly in Brazil, but you have an international presence. Do you bring something of Brazil to your work outside the country? Would a house in New Jersey have a “Brazilian touch”?
MK: I am Brazilian with a great influence of our modernism, and this translates to all my projects in a non-”folksy” way.
B: You live in São Paulo, which to many is a “love it or hate it” city. What are your thoughts on São Paulo?
MK: I like talking about São Paulo. It’s in my opinion one of the ugliest, most polluted, violent and chaotic cities in the world. It has all the defects that we can imagine and we curse it at every turn. Irrationally, São Paulo is also a sensational, radiant and full of a fantastic and incomparable vitality and energy rarely encountered in other cities. The mixture of all of this gives it a unique and passionate personality. I am addicted to São Paulo.
As Caetano Veloso would say:
“It’s that when I got here I didn’t understand anything
of the hard concrete poetry of your corners
the discreet dis-elegance of your girls…”
Its future? An even greater chaos. Its infrastructure is being built at a slower pace than the city grows. It’s the best example of “love it or hate it” that I know.
B: And what other cities/places do you like, for architectural or other reasons?
MK: After São Paulo, my favorite city is New York (which is almost a sister-city to São Paulo). I like energy, chaos and a multi-cultural population in a city. I can’t stand two days without that.
B: Is opening other offices worldwide in your plan?
MK: If the opportunity ever arises in a city that I like, I would love that.
B: You developed with Isay Weinfeld the exhibition “Arquitetura e Humor” (Architecture and Humor), a critical satire on urban planning projects in Brazil. What are your motivations behind these “alternative” projects? Do you feel you have a social responsibility, as an architect, in Brazil?
MK: When I studied architecture, all I developed were conceptual projects with a great deal of social, architectonic, and urbanistic criticism, with a touch of humor. This took over in such way that when I graduated as a very polemic architect I had no idea what to do in the real world. I developed with Isay five exhibitions (Architecture & Humor, Ornitologic Architecture, Umore and Architektur, Happyland and Happyland Vol. 2), that would tell this story. Happyland Vol. 2 participated in the 25th São Paulo Art Biennial in 2002. It was about a city in which terror and violence influenced in a radical way its concept and existence.
B: What’s the story behind the naked baby doll mascot?
MK: Humor and a little bit of subversion are part of my life. The mascot translates that in a mischievous, lovable way. Recently we used the mascot in a construction sign and within 24 hours it was graffitied with devil horns on its head.
Read part two of this interview here.
For more information on Marcio Kogan, click here.
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