Kobogo is a concrete mantilla for a new museum in Recife, Brazil

/ Architecture /

The Cais do Sertão Museum, which opened in 2018 on the embankment of the Brazilian port city of Recife, can be seen as a set of images and symbols that tell a poetic story about the traditions of life in the Sertão - wastelands in the southeast of South America.

The authorities of the Brazilian state of Pernambuco commissioned the construction of a multidisciplinary museum, which would combine expositions devoted to anthropology, ethnography, folk crafts, and modern urbanism and architecture, among others.

Cais do Sertão Museum, Recife, Brazil, Brasil Arquitetura project Photo: Nelson Kon

The architects of the Brasil Arquitetura office rejected the idea of ​​collecting all these components under one roof, and proposed to connect several buildings in a chain, including the old port warehouses, linearly located along the embankment.

Cais do Sertão Museum, Recife, Brazil, Brasil Arquitetura project Photo: Nelson Kon

The key fragment of the museum is a concrete block covered with a giant kobogo, the patterns of which resemble cracks in dry soil or branches of kaatinga shrubs - local endemics.

Cobogo (cobogó) is a term for an architectural element that is used as a screen from the sun, invented by builders and modernist architects working in Recife in the 30s.

Most often, these shaped blocks are cast from cement, concrete, sometimes from glass. Years later, "who" turned into a symbol of Sertau architecture. And the pattern developed for the museum kobogo became the ego's logo.

Cais do Sertão Museum, Recife, Brazil, Brasil Arquitetura project Photo: Nelson Kon

Cais do Sertão Museum, Recife, Brazil, Brasil Arquitetura project Photo: Nelson Kon

"There is nothing more fair than using someone in a building for Recife. Kobogo allows to soften the border between internal and external spaces. It creates a light filter for visitors who are inside, and see the lagoon as if from the caatinga thickets, and intrigue passers-by, forcing them to take a closer look," - this is how Brasil Arquitetura describes their idea.

Cais do Sertão Museum, Recife, Brazil, Brasil Arquitetura project Photo: Nelson Kon

Cais do Sertão Museum, Recife, Brazil, Brasil Arquitetura project Photo: Nelson Kon

The main museum block, shrouded in a veil, has one more structural feature - a 65-meter-long span that forms a covered square at street level. It can be used for concerts, parties, and fairs.

Museum expositions are located in two reconstructed buildings of port warehouses, connected by a second small square with a round canopy.

Cais do Sertão Museum, Recife, Brazil, Brasil Arquitetura project Photo: Nelson Kon

Cais do Sertão Museum, Recife, Brazil, Brasil Arquitetura project Photo: Nelson Kon

The concrete mixture used in construction has an ocher color. This is another symbolic touch - a pigment - that gives the concrete a resemblance to the clay soil of the Brazilian wild field.