Is this "new" brutalist architecture?  

You like it or you don't like it.
I really like it. Very strong. Much energy.
The building to me is clearly influenced by one or two ideas.
The first one is the furniture "Forma" retail store for selling Knoll. A truly Iconic building in Sao Paulo architecture. is by Paulo Mendes da Rocha in 1988.
And Kogan's obviously take it as reference.
In both, the simple idea of just a window to sale furniture, in a quite urban landscape, in a very comercial district, seems quite right. (see picture)
The second, Is a very contemporary exploration in textures, that came provably from graphics, , and remembers me so much the "favela chair" by Campana brothers. By the way, the favelas (as are called the Brazilian slums) have that texture.
I remember comments about how awful are Campana's work, I don't expect the same people would like this surfaces.
And completely agree with the-beloved (thanks for posting), that can express ideas clearly than me, where here you must see the furniture.
I just suspect, what happens during day-light. All photos are at night with the artificial light conveniently focus on surface. Just that, I think that during the day wouldn't be so interesting.
If you don't like it it's OK.
As DCW admit was A heavy handed joke if you get it. Simply an ugly building if you don't.
But, Dear Koen, If you need to justify it saying that disconnect his contribution to the urban landscape from existing local culture. That will inspire me to write for a long time. 🙂

Dear Gustavo
...I know and I am sure my point of view is going to inspire you for a long time, and at the end we will still disagree. I would like to explain you why we will disagree. As you carefully pointed out, there are in this building a number of sources of inspiration that are either based in previous buildings or in a form language that has a strong local base: The favelas or slums. I do not disagree with identifying these sources of inspiration; I disagree with the use of them. Let me start with a point that has been raised by you and others: the effectiveness as a commercial building. The main reason why I dislike the argument is that it ignores the fact that most of the time this is not a commercial building. It is a commercial building whenever it attracts the attention from the potential client (in the right income bracket)and when that potential client turns into a real client. But the rest of the time it is part of an urban landscape that serves everybody that happens to pass by. A city can not and should not be just the playground for architects. Architecture is by definition a very weak point in our democratic system. It allows a very small group of people to shape the environment in which we live, simply by the combined authority of capital, initiative and design. In the same way we resent in public buildings the use of large classic fronts on Parthenon-like buildings because they perpetuate a sense of authority rather than a sense of service, we should not be lured into an architecture that seems to serve only and exclusively a commercial purpose. This to me is one of the things we might one day agree on, for the other I have no hope. You see the architect as an artist, I see the architect as a creative person. As you have noticed in the past I do not see designers as artists, and in spite of all evidence that the field is massively invaded by artists, I persist in seeing design as a creative activity and not as an artistic activity. So...in this case, the fact that he has been (or could have been) inspired by the aesthetics of the favelas is not relevant to me other than as a cynical attitude toward those who are far away from the wealth that is required to access the products that are inside.

cont.
Even if it was on a different level a social critical choice and he would have justified it by saying (and I deliberately invent a silly symbolism) that the favelas-like juxtaposition of unrelated surfaces shows how the larger mass (the building) of poor Argentines supports the wealth of a smaller mass(the window) that represents the economical elite. I would still be offended because a building is not the appropriate space. These are billboard buildings, expressions of the authority grabbed by someone not to express the priorities and values of a society but to promote a personal interest. A city can not be the sum of all these personal interests. Public space can not be there for anybody to claim as personal space. We live in a society that does not understand the value of public space. Sometimes, to use it is seen as illegal and called graffiti, sometimes it is legal and called a billboard, to me, as a user of public space it does not make a difference wether someone did it out of frustration or because he was paid for it. It is not my space it is our space. To give it form, it requires creative solutions, not forms of self-expression, and that I guess is what will inspire you for some time to come. We will never agree because, to put it in an existentialist framework, you see yourself as an individual and I see myself as a person, and that is fine with me.
Post script: Please do not read it as an disapprouval of art and artistic expression. What I am saying is that art is too high on the scale of personal experience to be abused in public spaces.

I am going to lower the level of taste in this thread sharply!
Imagine for a moment, that I am an internationally reknowned architect named Phillipe Saint Branded-Dada, or as my promoters know me personally, Arnold Schiller.
Imagine I am asked to design a store that first catches people's attention and then draws them in.
I have the "aha!" moment.
I order assistants who know how to draw to sketch what I describe.
"Draw me a building that starts out looking and smelling like a 6 story tall, steaming pile of fresh dog shit with a sharp, clean well-lighted show room window at street level revealing some beautiful, well-lighted furniture. Its going to be a furniture store building in a busy city where there is a lot of competition for eyeballs."
One assistant says, "Eeewwwww!"
I say, "Stay with me on this. The steaming pile of dog shit and the associated smell are only the initial vulgarity we use shockingly to attract their attention to the furniture. We hold their attentions by designing the building so that it then morphs into an enormous set of female breasts perfumed with 500 gallons of Channel No. 5, or whatever other fragrance we can get a commercial tie in with."
My assistant has the "aha" moment now.
I continue: "But that's not the end of it. Next the building morphs into the hips and loins and pudenda of, oh, I don't know, who's hot these days, how about Megan Fox? We actually design it to morph into an exact copy of Megan Fox's stunningly hot quim and this replica of her hand keeps spreading the labia open around the show window and then another hand keeps bidding us inside."
My assistant is shaken again: "Eeeewwwwwwww!"

cont.
I say, "Stay with me on this. Just a while longer. The scent that the female privates emit is pure vanilla extract, over a thousand gallons worth. People love pure vanilla extract. Research documents again and again that it is the fragrance that everyone loves most. This they find irresistable. They are drawn like vampires addicted to vanilla flavored blood. And then as they approach the door the entire building morphs one last time in a huge favela reference kind of like Marcio Kogan's Vitra building. What do you think. It creates an irony between the customer's wealth and the poverty around them. The building is the poverty all around them. The furniture is the joy and comfort and diversion that their prosperity can buy them in the face of this horrifically asymetric world we live in. the building goes from drawing them into to being something they have to get inside of to escape its outside. I've been thinking of giving you a promotion and a raise, especially if we get the contract for this building? What do you think of the architectural program so far?"
My assistant says, "Its the greatest architectural idea I have ever heard of. It is attracts eyeballs better than the Great Pyramid of Ghiza. It attracts them better than Bilbao. It is better than anything that putz Renzo Piano has done. It makes Oscar Niemeier look imagination challenged. Luis Barragon seems a color hack. It is a work of art and artifice unparalleled in the last 10 millenia. It makes me feel all of your artistic and architectural power as a transformative revelation of greatness. It makes me want to hum the theme to "Sex in the City" and work longer hours for you."

cont.
Enter Koen de Winter come to town for a design conference and who has popped in to check up on the son of a friend that has recently started working at Phillipe Saint Branded-Dada and Associates as a draftsperson. Koen's friend is very worried about his son's new job and has asked Koen to look in on him. Koen overheard a bit of my "aha!" moment from the hallway through the open door.
"Do you think your design respects its surroundings sufficiently?" Koen asks in a calm tone.
"What surroundings?" I ask.
**************
Why do we like little villages in France? Because they are composed of individual buildings that respect each other's surroundings as they try to meet on site needs for space.
They were built at a time when the golden rule read:
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
Not as it has been revised of late:
"Do unto others before they do unto you."
The revision is part of the doctrine of pre-emptive architecture, the corollary to the doctrine of pre-emptive war. They are actually quite closely intertwined.

Sao Paulo Movie
I'd recomend to see Sao Paulo Movie,
is the first project in Mario Kogan website.
First it worth to see it.
Second, To see if is conected/disconected with the surroundings
PS: I have to go, I'll post longer later
http://www.marciokogan.com.br/

Magnificent movie!!!!
The final sequence with the Sao Paulo lights is brilliant.
From this movie I see that for Marcio Kogan: this building is a tribute to the heart and soul of Sao Paulo, its night and day, its rich AND poor.
Gustavo, thank you. I love this building even more.
Now THIS is architecture.
http://www.marciokogan.com.br/

magnificent???
..I was quite disappointed with the San Paulo video. It is the usual, fast moving impressionist collage, with very little content that is not addresses to the brain but to the nerve system. I have seen this dozens and dozens of times about dozens and dozens of cities; it always looks more or less the same and certainly leaves me more frustrated than informed. The very last thing it does, is convincing me that there is any connection between his architecture and the city. (by the way the store looks very small when we get to see it next to the larger neighbor... But let?s be fair, his buildings are not that bad. Yes it is "modern" following a rather simple recipe: start with an almost transparent ground floor, make sure you add a long corridor that ends visually against a large stone wall, put the second floor cantilevered on the ground floor. To position the volume 90 degrees on the ground floor would be appreciated. Give the second floor large closed surfaces. Put some kind of pool wherever you feel and do not forget to have a minimalist stair case with no guard and with the stairs only supported in the wall...and do not forget FLW?s advice: if it is bad you can always hide it behind some greenery. The end result is certainly a lot better than most of our homes... but you guessed it, I am not impressed and thinking of it, I do not see where it would fit in that small movie either...

This film is a shortened version of
the one that I have linked below.
Perhaps it delivers the message of the connection of São Paulo and this building with more clarity.
I respect your opinion Koen, but I disagree with you if you think there is no connection between Kogan's architecture and this city.
Click link below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OesJHXXwbbQ

.
Dear Dear Koen:
While reading your post after the second/third sentence I began to laugh, and couldn't stop. Hhuhahuha.
OK OK, we are not going to convince you, and you are not going to convince us.
And as you say: that is fine with me.
Dear Dear The-beloved.
I enjoyed a lot the second film too. I searched you-tube to post from there but didn't found anything. Thanks.
I enjoy films, and this one connected me with I don't know what. The building and don't know what else.

I watched the video on Youtube...
This Vitra show room is poured-in-place concrete reinforced with a rebar matrix. Not sure how it will fair in an earth quake (possibly brittle at the wall/roof joints and perhaps prone to pancaking?), but then I don't know if Sao Paulo has any active faults to worry about. Regardless, it seems to offer no advances in poured-in-place technology.
Is it green? Concrete is cool and damp.
Exterior aesthetics? Plain and simple. The texturing? In effect, it is essentially regionalist kitsch, though is probably intended as deformative idiom.
The interior? It is similar to any poured-in-place building, and also similar to concrete tilt-up structures.
I would find a city full of these buildings just as dreary and unimaginative as American suburbs filled with concrete tilt-up construction.
Frankly, it seems inconsequential architecturally, though I know there are quite a few here who really are enchanted by it.

Art
Art-Architecture
I don't want to let this thread gone without a comment.
I have to tell that the detail of Koen saying that seeing architecture as an art/creative/technical was so subtle that deserve some additional comment. And was another of those surprises that Koen gives us from time to time.
Dear Koen:
You are a designer, and I'm an intruder architect that invaded the design field.
And that could give some different perspectives.
At a point I could say
Saying that architecture is an art, it is widely accepted.
You are right, and my definition of architecture is that to be architecture, must reach that level of art. If it's not reached, it will be a building or a construction, as it's 95% of what it's built in most cities.
To solve what you said in the PS: " Please do not read it as an disapproval of art and artistic expression. What I am saying is that art is too high on the scale of personal experience to be abused in public spaces. " There is no problem to me, different people would read it in different levels, indeed most people won't see any difference with the other 95% constructed, perhaps some would see it "nicer" than others. Anyway we wouldn't underestimate the people, because some of them could surprise us reacting positively and happily, discovering thing that we didn't saw, while provably some expert critics-curators could demolish it.
And in the end to me this art should be like onions with different layers, reading layers, and it depend on the reader to read or not as much layers want / can.
Art-Architecture is in the public space, by definition, always it was an will be. Most of the architecture masterpieces are in public spaces.

Design Art
What can be more interesting is to see what happen on Industrial Design.
Now, let's see if we could apply this on the other direction.
Is design an art?, well that's for another thread, but ....
Industrial design as art is an issue baned for a long time. I think it was coherent to think that way in the beginning of industrial design. Artist were the one that began to design objects and furniture so provably the temptation (or mistake) to make a piece of art from each object was big. Tomas Maldonado was a painter but clearly marked the difference.
But now in 2010, all (or almost all) technical issues are solved. And because a large number of other issues, we are at a point in which we could say again: why an object could not be seen in another dimension?
After all is the only "creative" discipline where is (better say WAS) a kind of sin to cross that borderline.
That remember me an exhibition commented on DAblog:
U.F.O.: Blurring the boundaries between art and design
An exhibition in Düsseldorf, Germany. May-July 2009
""
Where does design end and art begin
"Charles Eames, the most influential designer of the mid-twentieth century, said that Wdesign is an expression of purpose. It may (if it is good enough) later be judged as art."
Contemporary young designers see the matter more pragmatically. According to the Spanish designer Jaime Hayon, "there is no longer a clear border between product design and art." The most recent answer to this question is inherent in the new phrase "design-art".
Artists like Franz West and others investigate the changing functions of sculpture and in so doing dissolve the borders between art and design, between "free" and "applied" creation, by allowing hybrids from other areas to develop. In the field of design, on the other hand, designers like Ron Arad or Marc Newson are increasingly discovering the sculptural qualities of design. They are distancing themselves from a conditionality of design - namely its function and the inherent possibility of reproducing something any number of times - and are creating unique items or small editions. The borders between "fine" and "decorative" art is becoming more blurred.
""
I see architecture as art, and begin to ask me why Design is not.
You don't see architecture as art, I cannot pretend you consider Design as art.
And that would be fine with me too. 🙂
http://www.designaddict.com/design_addict/blog/index.cfm/2009/5/20/UFO-B...

Dear Gustavo
The other day I was listening to Schubert's "Hymnen An Die Nacht" for piano only, interpreted by the North-Africa born French pianist Brigitte Engerer. She plays a wonderful Steinway and does it with such understanding of the possibilities of both the music and the instrument that I was speechless for hours after the last note was gone. I envy musicians, both composers and interpreters for being able to create art with such intensity and to do it with relatively simple means of production: the piano. They do not use much energy, not much more energy than what the human body can produce. Not only that, but this piece has been played thousands of times, by hundreds of the best interpreters and yet, so many years later (I guess that the poems that inspired Schubert dates back to the very end of the 18th century) someone like Mrs. Engerer, with her two feet in the 21st century can play it in such a way that it is highly relevant for our times. Considering that I can enjoy it without imposing on anybody else but those who want to enjoy it with me and you have to admit that this is a higher form of art. In all those ways, music seems to be a different form of art than most others. I use this introduction because in previously stating that I do not consider architecture and design to be art, I did not imply that it was not "an" art, and I recognize that there are differences between different arts.
First of all I have to say that I am not impressed by statements like the one by Jaime Hayon: that there is no longer a clear border between product design and art. It is highly self-serving and can not be taken seriously. It is true that fine arts in it's pictorial or sculptural form is all but dead and in passing away it has created numerous orphans like Jaime Hayon and many others. These poor orphans are left without means of surviving in painting and sculpture before even getting a chance to become good at it. So they did the right but self-serving thing, they moved to another area. To consumerism and its icons: products. They are so overwhelming and convincing in our culture, that it was not a very difficult to step into that field. In doing so they had to declare of course that there was no difference between art and design. They did it successfully, in part because post-modernism had opened a few doors. The fact that they never got a chance to hone their skills in those dying visual arts, made it a little bit awkward because the results were all but attractive and would never compare favourably with good paintings or sculptures, but they got some much needed help from the novelty hungry media and Voilà: the emperor has cloths! Another transcendent idea was to use the lack of skill and judgement and tell the world that it was intended that way.