Fernanda Marques: a gallery turns towards the city

A gallery can make its boundary the subject of the design. Fernanda Marques’s Roca São Paulo Gallery uses the relationship between interior and exterior to place a commercial space within a broader architectural conversation.

WAYFARER Brazil included the project in its March 2025 account of Brazilian design recognition. Roca’s own announcement confirms that the gallery received an iF Design Award that year in Public Architecture. That recognition is specific to the 2025 edition, not a claim about a later prize.

The project takes the Atlantic Forest as a visual reference. Glass façades, green walls and printed panels depicting vegetation create several degrees of connection between the room and the world outside it. The interest is not that a building becomes a forest, but that the natural reference is allowed to influence how the building presents itself to the street.

The São Paulo address belongs to a wider network of Roca galleries, each shaped by its local setting. Here, the Brazilian reference gives the network a distinct architectural voice. A showroom need not be understood only through the products it contains. It can also provide a setting for conversations about what the city builds and how it builds it.

Award and design details checked against Roca’s March 2025 announcement.

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Adapted from the WAYFARER Brazil archive, first published 2025-03-10. English adaptation: 6 October 2026. This is an archival account, not a report of a new visit. Exhibitions, collections and menu details are described in their original context, not as current availability.