loating among the dense tree canopy
of São Paulo’s leafy Jardins suburb is architect
Marcio Kogan’s latest offering, an artfully
created box named Volume C. It is the second
space the Brazilian architect has created for
furniture and design store Micasa, founded
over 20 years ago by Houssein Jarouche
and dealing in design from the emerging and
the established. ‘It stands for good design,
rather than just labels,’ says Kogan.
Completing Micasa’s corner-site complex,
Volume C is intended as a pavilion for
new retail concepts, events and designers
in residence. For Kogan, the leading light
of contemporary Brazilian modernism and
principal of São Paulo-based Studio MK27,
Jarouche was an ideal client. ‘Good clients
with an open mind allow for experimentation
whatever the programme is,’ he says.
Kogan wanted this project to signal
a significant move forward from his 2007
Volume B, a heavy concrete box inspired
by the city’s brutalist architecture, and
the original Volume A, an industrial metal-
and-glass box designed by French-Brazilian
studio Triptyque. Thus, Volume C blends
new timber construction techniques
with influences from Japan in a lightweight
wood-framed structure that features two
wide openings. It’s a 15m by 15m void designed
to be filled with ideas, people – and even
a refurbished 1960s Airstream caravan, which
will be parked inside from time to time.
Kogan chose wood to bring warmth to
the space, but also to put to use some of
the studio’s research into sustainable timber
construction. ‘The wooden structure with
detailed joinery points to a more sustainable
and simple way of building,’ he says. ‘All
pieces were assembled with ease, minimising
waste and maintaining a low carbon
footprint.’ So while Volume C showcasesthe clean lines and airy spaces of modernism,
it looks firmly towards the future, moving
away from the genre’s traditional heavy
concrete and glass and allowing it to become
more versatile – not to mention welcoming
and approachable.
A structure of glued laminated timber
frames and steel rods supports an outer
skin of white metal-plate and polycarbonate
panels. Kogan says the translucent sheets
bring a ‘more mysterious sort of transparency’
to the volume and allow a tempered,
even spread of daylight into the 7.5m-high
space from above, as well as the unexpected
‘kinetic spectacle’ of shadows from the
surrounding trees.
When the sun sets, Volume C marks
its presence by becoming a glowing Japanese
lantern illuminated from within by an
Isamu Noguchi pendant lamp that hangs
centrally, emphasising the space’s symmetry.
The dynamic lightness of the structure
is reminiscent of Sou Fujimoto’s airy framed
structures or Kazuyo Sejima’s minimalist
cuboids – all enlivened by São Paulo’s context
of dense flora, impromptu street life and
mild evenings. ‘In my opinion, contemporary
Japanese architecture finds a common
ground in Brazilian modernism,’ says Kogan.
‘I have a strong identification with its search
for simplicity and emotion’. For the past
five years, he says, he has been returning to
Tokyo annually for a ‘two-week immersion’.
Volume C is a breath of fresh air, a
structure where modernism is infused with
culture, experimentation and feeling. The
principles of modernism, ‘a rational and
humanistic architecture’, are ‘still the ethical
and aesthetic guidelines for contemporary
architecture’, says Kogan – but the
other ingredients can be up to you.^ ∂
studiomk27.com.br; micasa.com.brF
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