Lina Bo Bardi and her modernist structure: a information
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Designed by Lina Bo Bardi and constructed between 1957 and 1968, São Paulo’s MASP (Museu de Arte de São Paulo) is an architectural revelation: an enormous glass-fronted quantity suspended above the road by 4 stark crimson pillars, a dramatic city gesture echoing above and beneath floor. You have a tendency to recollect the primary time you encounter a constructing authored by the architect who will go on to form your ardour for the sector, and for this humble design author, that second got here with a go to to that constructing practically 20 years in the past. For the twenty-something humanities pupil I used to be on the time, MASP turned my concept of what structure might be the wrong way up. Just like the modernist structure grasp herself, the constructing resists conference and simple definition.
(Picture credit score: Artistic Commons)
Lina Bo Bardi: a pioneering modernist
Italian émigré Bo Bardi arrived in Brazil in 1946 and has since change into a logo of Brazilian modernism and cultural id. But her path to recognition was neither straight nor assured. Ignored for a lot of her profession and posthumously misunderstood, her work was too usually diminished by reductive readings of her gender or restricted output; she thus remained a marginal determine in modernist architectural historical past till comparatively lately.
Shot for Wallpaper’s June 2010 ‘Born in Brazil’ problem, which was devoted completely to the nation, Casa de Vidro (Glass Home) is constructed on pilotis, so it seems to drift above the landscaped wilderness
(Picture credit score: Stefan Ruiz)
The architect, Lina Bo Bardi
Lina Bo Bardi was born in 1904 in Rome, Italy. As a latest graduate from the Rome School of Structure, she labored with Carlo Pagani and Gio Ponti, and she or he later served as deputy director of Domus journal. She married artwork critic and journalist Pietro Maria Bardi in 1946, and collectively, they moved to Brazil later that very same 12 months, the place Bo Bardi arrange her structure apply.
Whereas the vast majority of her work remained lesser identified outdoors specialist circles for many of the twentieth and early twenty first centuries, the final decade has seen Bo Bardi take her rightful place within the canon of Brazilian, and certainly world, structure. Nonetheless, a way of thriller clings to her – a mystique which will nicely have been of her personal design. Greater than an architect, she was a cultural anthropologist of types, intent on channelling what she, the wide-eyed Italian arrival, noticed to be the true soul of Brazil, into her work. Her deep fascination with the traditions and crafts of the nation’s poorer and distant north-east areas, significantly Bahia, knowledgeable her designs in ways in which went far past type or model.
From the identical, June 2010, problem of Wallpaper*, Bo Bardi’s studio, within the grounds of Glass Home, shows drawings, books and posters
(Picture credit score: Stefan Ruiz)
In 2019, British filmmaker and artist Sir Isaac Julien captured this complexity in Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement, casting mother-and-daughter Brazilian cinema legends Fernanda Montenegro and Fernanda Torres to color a twin portrait of Bo Bardi. The ensuing poetic homage cemented Bo Bardi’s revered posthumous standing.
Her constructed legacy could also be modest in numbers – simply 20 realised initiatives, all in Brazil – but it surely brims with imaginative and prescient, audacity, and care. Her drawings, writings, and what can solely be described as spirit, proceed to reverberate by way of the tradition and structure of her adopted homeland. In what follows, we discover six of her accomplished works. Few in quantity, maybe, however every one reveals an depth of thought and a dedication to society, artwork and structure that makes it unforgettable.
Marcio Kogan – photographed for our Wallpaper* Visitor Editors’ 2024 problem by Eudes de Santana – within the auditorium at São Paulo’s SESC Pompéia manufacturing facility constructing, designed by Lina Bo Bardi in 1986
(Picture credit score: Eudes de Santana)
Lina Bo Bardi: 6 key initiatives
Casa de Vidro
Italian trend home Bottega Veneta’s ‘The Sq.’ venture is a travelling cultural collection that seeks to offer a dialogue with nations world wide; in 2023, the model decamped to Lina Bo Bardi’s Casa de Vidro
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Bottega Veneta)
The place: São Paulo
When: 1951
Having been in Brazil scarcely 5 years, Bo Bardi’s first main venture was a residence for her and her husband, author and gallerist Pietro Maria Bardi, whom she had adopted from Italy after their marriage in 1945. It was inbuilt 1951 on what had been a tea plantation within the once-rainforest-covered hills that encompass São Paulo. The architect designed two skinny slabs made out of strengthened concrete to take a seat on the slenderest of metal, stilt-like pilotis. These two slabs, forming the ground and the ceiling, have been lower into to create a courtyard after which enveloped by a curtain of glass home windows, permitting the bushes that have been planted by Bo Bardi to develop inside and round, interacting with the structure.
The Casa de Vidro or ‘Glass Home’ she created was one of many first three residences to be constructed within the Morumbi space, a neighbourhood that will change into a byword for a really Brazilian (and a really unique) modernist suburb: set in tropical nature and exuding a misleading simplicity. The gorgeous use of glass and the open plan of the home’s format permits the pure, exterior panorama to transmute inside, intermarrying with Bo Bardi and her husband’s fastidiously chosen and really eclectic furnishings, discovered objects and artworks.
This obvious simplicity belies an ingenious structural design that was drawn by Italian engineering grasp Luigi Nervi in 1950 and tailored by Túlio Stucchi in 1951. Bo Bardi’s structure is so full on the Casa de Vidro that it virtually encapsulates her total profession, her angle and even her legacy; it was her first try to discover a Brazilian language for the Italian modernism she had been educated in. It was a really profitable first try, too. This synthesis of Brazilian panorama and spirit with rationalist, European method was the architect’s residence for 40 years and now homes the Istituto Bardi. The Casa de Vidro is a crystalline distillation of her architectural philosophy.
MASP – São Paulo Museum of Trendy Artwork
MASP was lately expended with a tower, seen to the left of the {photograph}
(Picture credit score: Leonardo Finotti)
The place: São Paulo Museum of Trendy Artwork
When: 1957-1968
The realisation of MASP is outstanding in additional methods than one. The truth that Lina Bo and Pietro Maria Bardi, the glamorous new arrivals to Brazil from wartorn Italy, managed to accrue the leverage and affect to get this nice trendy museum off the bottom is a good story in itself. All of it started in 1947 when Pietro Maria befriended Assis Chateaubriand, a media magnate and famously controversial determine, serving to him amass an unlimited assortment of artwork which included works by Bosch, Mantegna, Titian and Goya. Pietro Maria took cost to change into the museum’s first director, and Bo Bardi would design a constructing match for Chateaubriand’s massive ambitions.
Her idea was radical: the museum’s fundamental quantity hovers in mid-air, suspended between two colossal concrete beams supported by 4 pillars, which have been then painted a crimson hue that subsequently turned like an city trope for São Paulo. The void beneath creates a public plaza and viewing deck, the place a fussy, Belle Époque belvedere as soon as stood. It was a democratic area within the coronary heart of the megalopolis. On the time of building, it was the most important free-standing span on the planet.
Inside, Bo Bardi’s clear ‘crystal easels’ displayed artworks with out partitions, permitting guests to maneuver freely and break from conventional museum hierarchies. Whereas discovering a splendidly revolutionary approach to show Chateaubriand’s assortment of European masters, for MASP’s opening present in 1969, Bo Bardi additionally curated an exhibition of objects from the Brazilian hinterland entitled ‘The Hand of the Brazilian Folks’, difficult perceptions of artwork. But extra outstanding is that this all happened regardless of the navy dictatorship that was put in in 1964. Lina’s MASP was a daring act of architectural resistance, and within the course of, she created the definitive São Paulo landmark. One which was open, accessible, and unflinchingly trendy; a poetic brutalism rooted in social function.
Photo voltaic do Unhão
(Picture credit score: Paul Robert Burley)
The place: Salvador
When: 1959-63
In Salvador da Bahia, Bo Bardi embraced historical past, treating it not as a barrier however as a canvas. Starting in 1959, she reworked the colonial-era Photo voltaic do Unhão, a crumbling Seventeenth-century sugar mill and residence overlooking the bay that provides Brazil’s previous, colonial capital its title. Bo Bardi’s interventions have been delicate but radical: fairly than erase the ruins, she made them a stage for up to date artwork and group life, weaving trendy structure into weathered partitions and courtyards. Her philosophy of ‘understanding dwell within the ruins’ honoured reminiscence whereas inviting renewal, argues Brazilian author and curator Luiza Proença.
Her dedication to Salvador’s cultural cloth prolonged past Photo voltaic do Unhão to initiatives just like the Barroquinha Cultural Centre, Casa do Benin, and the historic Ladeira da Misericórdia – a steep road embodying town’s layered identities. Right here, she created a modernist grotto constructed into the ruins and pure panorama. Bo Bardi’s profound connection to Bahia’s heritage options prominently in Sir Isaac Julien’s 2019 movie, Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement, which explores the entwined histories of place, artwork, and id.
SESC Pompéia
(Picture credit score: Joalpe)
The place: São Paulo
When: 1977-1986
Within the post-industrial neighbourhood of Pompéia, at a former manufacturing facility advanced, Bo Bardi created a brand new type of public structure, one which Brazil had by no means earlier than seen: one which was open, adaptable, and deeply human. Commissioned by the progressive social service establishment SESC (a really Brazilian peculiarity that has few international equivalents) within the late Seventies, the venture reworked the location right into a cultural and leisure centre serving the native working and middle-class group.
Quite than erase the economic previous, Bo Bardi embraced it. She preserved the unique concrete sheds, inserting libraries, theatres, workshops, and cafés into their uncooked, sturdy shells. She designed a meandering indoor stream, whose water trickles over polished stones, referencing Japanese gardens. She constructed three putting towers of uncovered concrete, linked by aerial walkways that appear to drift between the silo-like edifices. These contained gymnasiums, altering rooms, and social areas – all sculpted with playfulness and function. For Bo Bardi, this was not simply structure however activism. SESC Pompéia was a ‘citadel of freedom’ – a spot the place tradition, sport, and on a regular basis life might combine. Many years on, it stays a radical mannequin of inclusive, democratic design.
Teatro Oficina
(Picture credit score: Revista Esquinas)
The place: São Paulo
When: 1984
In her renovation of Teatro Oficina, Bo Bardi turned a burned-out workplace constructing on a scrappy plot of land into an area of radical expression. Working with stage actor, director and playwright José Celso Martinez Corrêa (referred to as Zé Celso), she stripped the constructing again to its bones and reimagined it as a slender, high-volume efficiency area, half stage, half road, half ritualistic procession. As an alternative of a standard proscenium, Bo Bardi inserted an extended central runway flanked by steep scaffolding bleachers, permitting actors and viewers to share the identical uncooked power. The roof was partially opened to let in solar and rain, reinforcing the sense that the theatre was alive, porous, and unfinished.
This was theatre as revolution: bodily, political, unpredictable. Bo Bardi’s interventions revered the spirit of the area whereas intensifying its immediacy. Teatro Oficina stays considered one of her most visceral works, a residing monument to Brazilian counterculture and to her enduring perception that structure ought to provoke, liberate, and interact. In latest many years, plans for high-rise developments on adjoining land have sparked fierce controversy, seen by many as a direct menace to the theatre’s radical openness and cultural legacy.
Casa Valéria P Cirell
The place: Morumbi, São Paulo
When: 1958
Designed in 1958 for the architect’s buddy Valéria P Cirell, the house seems virtually hand-sculpted – a tough, geometric type clad in stone, pebbles, and ceramic shards, extra natural spoil than polished modernist villa. In distinction to the metal and glass of her earlier Casa de Vidro close by, this home embraces earthiness and enclosure. Vegetation threads by way of the partitions and up onto inexperienced roof terraces that harvest rain and funky the interiors. Inside, two bedrooms, a spartan spiral stair, and a mezzanine are organized round beneficiant shared areas that open absolutely onto the backyard and swimming pool. The home, just like the neighbourhood of Morumbi basically (that Bo Bardi was so pivotal in defining) is a personal sanctuary in the midst of town. Influenced by Antoni Gaudí and the Iberian roots of Brazilian tradition, the home reveals one other aspect of Bo Bardi’s structure: extra tactile, extra rooted, however nonetheless positively trendy. A hidden gem, it stays considered one of her most poetic and private works.
