Marcio Kogan founded Studio MK27 in the late 1970s in São Paulo. Today, the architect and his partners Diana Radomysler, Renata Furlanetto, Suzana Glogowski, and Mariana Simas oversee the studio and a team of 50 architects working on residential and cultural buildings across Brazil and beyond. The Architecture of Studio MK27. Lights, camera, action is an essential overview of the studio's output.
'The Architecture of Studio MK27. Lights, camera, action'
The book is the first monograph on the studio's work and presents a strong selection of recent projects, including many previously featured in Wallpaper*, along with an overview of the five key elements that go into Studio MK27’s approach. These are each helmed by a different writer, including architects Gabriel Kogan and Filippo Bricolo, Wallpaper’s own Ellie Stathaki, regular contributor Scott Mitchem and dezeen’s Amy Frearson.
The sections, Inside Out, Narrative, Light, Body and Texture, take us through 27 projects in total, including the Bahia Beach House and Casa Redux in Brazil, the serene Flag House in Whistler and MK27’s first hotel project, Patina Maldives.
The monograph includes a section on Studio MK27’s product and furniture design work – in particular its long-standing collaboration with Italian design brand Minotti, which has resulted in several notable products, like the ‘Quadrado’ outdoor furniture system, and the ‘Brasilia’ and ‘Superquadra’ collections from 2021.
Kogan’s interests in image and filmmaking help create a cinematic character in the work, especially in the relationship between structure and landscape. This is widescreen architecture, long and linear, a world viewed through a ratio of 1.37:1. There’s also a strong narrative thread running through each project, with rooms that unfold like a sequence of scenes as they reveal new views inside and out, with surfaces and textures responding to dynamic changes in natural light throughout the day.
With spectacular photography throughout by Fernando Guerra, André Scarpa and others, Lights, camera, action lives up to the epic billing implied by the title. Studio MK27 occupies a rare place in the global architectural discourse, for sure, with clients and projects many other studios would envy. Happily, the talents of the team make the most of these opportunities, and this rich blockbuster monograph is the result.
'The Architecture of Studio MK27. Lights, camera, action', $65, Rizzoli, RizzoliUSA.com, @RizzoliBooks. Also available from Amazon
