House 6 by Marcio Kogan
Brazilian architect Marcio Kogan has recently completed the House 6 project in São Paulo, Brazil.

Description of House 6 by Marcio Kogan:
The House 6 project was thought out after the client had made an important request. The family wanted a covered external space to be used for everyday living. This space should be used to organize all the social life of the house. The Brazilian tropical climate suggests ample use of these solutions in vernacular as well as in modern architecture. Beginning from the colonial, Brazilian architecture has usually incorporated a space that was known as the veranda. Verandas are covered linear spaces in front of the living room and bedrooms which act as the intermediary between the interior and exterior.
In the House 6 project, the idea of the veranda has been reinvented. The veranda is not exactly in front of the living room, disposed longitudinally, but, rather, perpendicular to it. The wooden pillars that give support to the structure and the clay tiles of traditional verandas have been substituted by modern pilotis that support a volume of flat slabs. The veranda of House 6, nonetheless, still remains an open space and, simultaneously, opens to the garden and the pool. It is a living room, a TV room and an extension of the internal kitchen.
This space, then, structured the entire architecture of the house, organized in two transversal volumes and an annex in the back that holds a home office. The lower volume houses the utilities, the kitchen and the living room with door-frames that can be recessed into the walls, and thereby entirely opening the internal space to either side. This sets the cross-ventilation and an unfettered contiguous view of the garden. The upper volume has the private area of the house with the bedrooms and, on the third floor there is a small multiple-use living room alongside an upper deck.
Architecturally, the space of the veranda, located under the bedrooms, would have a low ceiling-height, to create a warm feeling. The sum of the structure of the two perpendicular volumes and the living room ceiling-height would result in a very high ceiling. Thus, it was decided to make the living room lower in relation to the veranda and the garden. This result made it possible to have a house with elongated proportions and the viability of a covered external pleasant space to be used on both warm and cool days in the city of São Paulo.
Project: House 6
Location: São Paulo, Brazil
Site Area: 890 m2
Built Area: 995 m2
Architecture
Author: Marcio Kogan
Co-author: Diana Radomysler
Interior Design Co-authors: Diana Radomysler, Mariana Simas
Team: Beatriz Meyer, Carolina Castroviejo, Eduardo Chalabi
Eduardo Glycerio, Gabriel Kogan, Lair Reis
Maria Cristina Motta, Oswaldo Pessano, Renata Furlanetto
Samanta Cafardo, Suzana Glogowski
Landscape Architect: Renata Tilli
General Contractor: Lock Engenharia
arq. marcelo ribeiro
Structure Engineer: Leão & Associados
eng. joão rubens leão
Photographer: Rômulo Fialdini
Visit the Marcio Kogan website – here.
.
.






































Ebenezer Construction on 21 Apr 2010 at 10:02 am #
OMG!
Wish I had builders capable of doing this in the Congo…
Jonathan Mangham on 21 Apr 2010 at 11:07 am #
Stunning, stunning, stunning.
Oh to live in a climate where that is possible.
Oscar O´Farrill Fabela on 21 Apr 2010 at 2:19 pm #
Oh my goodness! awesome. Nice house, Congratulations Kogan´s team.
TW on 21 Apr 2010 at 3:05 pm #
The Brazilians know how to do this style of architecture to perfection. Well done Marcio.
ONYX on 21 Apr 2010 at 5:49 pm #
I find it difficult to describe how well executed this is.
ken on 21 Apr 2010 at 6:34 pm #
great house ..very good work.
Ken on 21 Apr 2010 at 6:51 pm #
Finally, a home built for a family with a little modesty. Good use of space and materials.
rita shayo on 21 Apr 2010 at 8:21 pm #
MARCIO KOGAN IS A GENIOUS !
WHAT A GORGEOUS HOME !
I WISH I CAN AFFORD HIM ONE DAY.
ESTA CASA E MARAVILHOSA !
PARABENS !
R.S(brasilian lady)
Tom Harper on 21 Apr 2010 at 8:49 pm #
To take essentially two rectangular boxes and, through orientation and detail, make something so serene, warm and beautiful is amazing.
Kingué on 22 Apr 2010 at 4:47 am #
@Ebenezer Construction You dreams might come true..we’re working on a real estate devellopement project in Kinshasa..Marcio is def on the list …
Luke on 22 Apr 2010 at 5:22 am #
WOW! Marcio Kogan you are an inspiration. Fantastic house, superb layout and design. You’re one of my favourite architects. Keep up the good work. WOW! WOW! WOW! (check out his website!!!)
Jaroslaw on 22 Apr 2010 at 5:46 am #
This space is simply perfect! I would just use more contemporary furnishings.
Manuel Laverde on 22 Apr 2010 at 10:10 am #
Excelente vivienda, pocos elementos y una calidad espacial increíble. Felicitaciones por depurar aun mas el magnifico trabajo. Con pocos materiales y sin alardes formales se pueden lograr espacios muy buenos.
Saludos desde Bogota
miro on 22 Apr 2010 at 12:42 pm #
MARCIO É SEMPRE UM SHOW….TOP BRASIL
ziiip on 22 Apr 2010 at 2:58 pm #
He did it again: two retangles !!!
Where’s the new ???
Kate on 22 Apr 2010 at 4:05 pm #
perfect! wonderful! Sergio Rodrigues’s furniture gives the space the additional charm.
TW on 22 Apr 2010 at 4:56 pm #
ziiip – the ‘new’ is in the composition.
Anyone can build a box but only a few can turn 2 boxes into something so beautiful and elegant. The ‘box’ house by Rodriguez in this blog looks like a clumsy dinosaur in comparison to this.
Suzan Rhodes on 22 Apr 2010 at 6:24 pm #
What could possible be said about perfection. Sublime
Dano on 22 Apr 2010 at 10:49 pm #
Gorgeous! A sidebar, many wealth Brazilians make Americans look poor in comparison. Lots of them travel thru town by… helicopter — it is faster than car and safer for the uber-wealthy as well.
feka on 23 Apr 2010 at 1:47 am #
everithing have sense and everithing fit in style for the place under the sun …. what’a great life mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm………..
marshen on 23 Apr 2010 at 4:37 am #
Perfectly stunning house. I would be very happy living there. The kitchen leaves a little bit to be desired compared to the rest of the house which is absolute perfection. The bedroom with the biscuit tuft headboard is heaven. The little 50′s chair is a great touch.
Paulete on 23 Apr 2010 at 9:29 am #
I’m so happy to see these pictures because I live close to this house and I was very very curious to see inside during the time they were building it!!
kahn on 25 Apr 2010 at 7:20 am #
Kogan does a good job, indeed. But let’s see the environment:
- NO EARTHQUAKES (very easy, almost invisible structure)
- NO SNOW, NO FREEZING TEMPERATURES (no thermo insulations, no radiators, open spaces)
- NO COST AND SURFACE LIMITS (wealthy clients, no problems to pay for extra – even unuseful – space)
- NO PLOT CHALLENGES (all rectangular and/or huge = no hard studies to comprise the building, no needed subtility to change angles and so)
Just an architect’s paradise, agree?
TW on 25 Apr 2010 at 5:15 pm #
Not so much architects paradise but architects skill.
I assume that if Kogan was faced with an environment susceptible to earthquakes, freezing temperatures, plot variances and a client on a budget, then he would design accordingly.
But I imagine he would retain the same degree of elegance.
In fact, this type of building design is very suitable to the types of limitation you listed.
kahn on 30 Apr 2010 at 11:20 am #
Skill is something very relative in architecture.
That’s why we can’t speak about “wonder children” here, as in other arts.
For example, many of my students in architecture, in their first years of study, design such beautiful compositions of simple volumes, with very forceful images. But, later, they understand that this simple, pure architecture of their dreams, is not possible in the real world (or in almost 95% of it), because it can’t be built or – more! – it can’t be lived – so that they learn to refine their skill accordingly.
In this respect, Kogan’s architecture could be suitable (and even spectacular) in some particular – geographic and financial – conditions, but it has not the quality to be worldwide valuable, as the great architecture has!
I see Kogan’s houses as some splendid samba dancers – incredible beautiful, at the first glance, but would you be happy to spend an entire life with them?
Please – before lapidate me for this position – try to see the works of Louis Barragan, Alvaro Siza Vieira, or Alberto Campo Baeza. They all have worked in somehow similar conditions, but their architecture is much more elaborate, much international, much… human!
TW on 30 Apr 2010 at 11:41 pm #
I don’t undetstand the comparisons with Siza, Barragan or Baeza? Plus I’m not sure that you can say that the former two work on a more ‘human’ scale. I would have thought the opposite actually.
If comparisons need to made to other great architects who managed to create beautiful, poetic rectangles on a human scale, then Mies VDR and Le Corbusier spring to mind much more readily. Both built houses that could be created given a range of limitations.
kahn on 01 May 2010 at 12:23 pm #
Certainly we don’t speak about the same Barragan and Baeza
But it’s not about the scale, here, it’s about a human oriented architecture, opposite to the “show my muscles” oriented one. A house should not be a museum!
Mies and Corbu also have designed some “exhibition” houses just for demonstrating their ideas – these houses were lived for very few time and now they are museums (or pieces of collection for excentrics).
But their work has much more faces and, first of all, they both had strong philosophies that changed forever the architecture.
I don’t thing that this applies to Kogan! His houses are “cool”, but nothing trully new. He shows some skill, good choice of materials, nice details – but no philosophy. Worse, in the last years he just seems happy with the “recipe” that he has found and repeats it infinitely, with some little variations – but, unfortunately, in art that means “mannerism”.
It’s a shame, because Kogan was very promising, years ago. I still hope that, sometimes, he will understand to work less and to think more, to involve more soul. He really could be better than this.
TW on 01 May 2010 at 7:02 pm #
It’s good to have debate kahn and I wish there was more of it.
There can only be one Barragan, Baeza and Siza? Barragan is one of my favourite architects but to say his houses weren’t monumental is incorrect. San Cristoabal is a good example of a “show my muscles” house.
Also, don’t all architects aspire to design to demonstrate their ideas? Imagine the type of buildings that would be designed if architects did not do this! Awful!
And if the works of Mies and Le Corb are museums now, that was never their intention when designing them. Eg. Mies with Farnsworth House. Of course, this is a good time to point out that many of Barragans houses are also museums now.
And lastly, what you call ‘recipe’, I would call a developed style. I would employ Krogan if I related to his rectangular recipe/style. Or I would employ Hadid if I wanted her fluid recipe/style. This recipe is the reason we can spot a Mackintosh design, a FLW house, a Kelly Wearstler interior without any clues about the designer.
We shall have to agree to disagree about Kogan. It appeals to me but not to you. That’s OK.
kahn on 03 May 2010 at 2:16 pm #
Indeed, TW, this debate becomes very pleasant.:)
)… For parties, yes, this architecture could offer enough space and interesting scenery, I can imagine a very nice atmosphere. But the rest of the time?
About Kogan’s appeal, I would not be so categorical: I like very much some of his lines, volumes or textures! But as abstract art, not as architecture! Because I think that he is (deliberately) ignoring… the humans. He draws for them a very sketchy life – exhibit all day in the middle of the open and impersonal space, then hide in the hotel-like boxes. No familiarity, no personal objects, no intimacy, no meditation corners (not in religious sense
Or maybe I’m wrong and all the (wealthy) brazilians spend all their life in parties?
If so, ok, the “recipe” is good! But I still hesitate to call this a “developed style”! Why? Because if I can admit that all Kogan’s clients could be as similar as the Borgs (and an explanation could be that he is enough renowed to select his clients), I have serious doubts that the plots and the natural environments are always the same! Or, to ignore the site particularities and to make the same architecture everywhere… it’s not so good. Maybe I’m wrong again – in fact, Kogan use not to show too much about the environements, so that I can’t judge. But there is one exception, the Paraty House, where I can see more and which I consider one of the worse human interventions in nature!
For me that’s enough to understand that he is ready to sacrifice anything for making his preferred volumes, I even don’t need to know too much about other situations.
Ok, now, I must recognize that Kogan is not the worse architect that we can see here (or on other popular sites). At least, he is good enough to cause this kind of debates, in comparison with other very common works that are posted.
But there is some better architecture in the world, and it’s regretful that some really good architects are too shy to show their work to the general public.
***
About Barragan – it’s hard for me to understand what do you consider to be monumental in his architecture?! Please explain!;)
I also don’t think that we can speak about a recipe in FLW’s work. By contrary, his diversity is always astonishing and all his houses are perfect examples of adaptation to environmental conditions!
Finally, it’s interesting that you have mentioned Zaha Hadid! Yes, she is great, she has made an entire philosophy and some outstanding buildings, in the past. But I think that now, when she is very demanded, she also has adopted a ” successful recipe” and her work – although spectacular – becomes more and more a “shape without content”. Let’s see when (and if, in this crises!) some of her recent projects will be finished!
korede roberts on 09 May 2010 at 3:45 pm #
marcio kogan never stops blowing my mind
Vanessa Bonghanoy on 18 May 2010 at 10:25 pm #
very nice… i just don’t seem to like the color water green.. but i think it’s still fine…
dracseg on 06 Jun 2010 at 1:35 am #
very nice
alessandra contigli on 08 Jul 2010 at 4:37 pm #
Como sempre uma arquitetura sublime, limpa ,leve , elegante e consistente!!!!!
Não tenho palavras para descrever tamanho bom gosto , na escolha perfeita do mobiliário, no detalhamento cuidadoso , na arquitetura que se extende a decoração…perfeito…Parabéns é pouco , a vc e toda a sua equipe maravilhosa!!!!A arquitetura que nos inspira…simples mortais…
Ezio Auditore on 20 Jul 2010 at 1:58 am #
I don’t think MK ignores people deliberately. I think it’s all about architecture as a FRAME that holds and gives meaning to our life.
It enables us to do what we want and I think it should be up to the end users to complete it. I don’t believe in architects as God-like beings, the chosen ones, the Illuminatti, who deliver a final and perfect and complete and untouchable piece of artwork which leaves people imprisoned in its own rules.
To me, what’s fair is to give people the freedom to look wherever they like, to move the furniture however they like, to use THEIR house the way they please.
Architecture is related to the simplest things: Sun orientation, dominant winds, ground/level conditions or requirements, money, materials available, professionals available and Guts&Glory.
Sheryl Limawarty on 08 Aug 2010 at 10:58 am #
I live in the tropics, got a plot around 800m2 which im gonna build on.. Sorry, I can’t afford you MK, but I have an architect friend in Malaysia who has similar taste like you, MK…
Btw, love your designs…especially when indoors and outdoors merged into one unit…
Andrea on 24 Sep 2010 at 12:06 am #
Does anyone know any architects in Melbourne Australia with a similar style?
Howard M. Jones on 13 Feb 2011 at 1:08 pm #
Why do all the best homes seem to be in Brazil?