Snapshot: In Sao Paulo, renowned photographer Fernando Guerra rediscovers Studio MK27’s marriage of Japanese and Brazilian architecture at Studio SC, an impressive culinary photography studio.

Architectural photographer Fernando Guerra revisits a 2011 project in Sao Paulo, Brazil called Studio MK27, a photography studio specializing in the production of food photos. The studio was the fruit of an internal competition the MK27 team held in which three design groups developed a different idea for the studio’s look over the course of a day, with the resulting building, being part synthesis of these ideas, part original development. This culminating design, which was helmed by lead architect Marcio Kogan, co-architect Suzana Glogowski, and interior designer Diana Radomysler, is re-committed to album-form through Guerra’s lens, in his process of rediscovering these gardens, work rooms, kitchens, and offices.

For a studio specializing in culinary photography it’s interesting to situate the entrance through a large garden, as if highlighting a sort of “farm-to-table” mentality that is very much in vogue in today’s urban scene of Yelpers and foodies. However, the garden is noticeably more tropical than a kitchen garden, palm trees dominating in place of tomato plants or lettuce patches; and one of commentative aspects of this design is to open up a dialogue between Japanese and Brazilian architecture, two schools that have previously maintained their national integrity but which were of equal inspiration to the designers of Studio MK27. The application of wood elsewhere is also evidence of this, but the most outstanding manifestation of the dialogue is situating the studio’s entrance through this zen-like area, which calms and conditions the mind.

Photography by Fernando Guerra at FG+SG