Material IdeologiesWomen in Design and Architecture Publication SeriesEdited by Mónica Ponce de León | Princeton University Press | $49.95.
Lina Bo Bardi
Her modern value system was rooted in Europe, but she was adopted by her new country, taking notes from Brazilian popular culture overlooked by the establishment.
Over the course of her career, she would continue to question the establishment and reverse cultural norms.
But one day her father told her this was all nonsense and that there was a famous woman practicing architecture in Brazil—it was, of course, Bo Bardi.
The twelve writers—a collection of scholars, artists, architects, and curators, including Bo Bardi expert Zeuler R. M. de A. Lima—each provide distinct viewpoints ...
...on Bo Bardi’s work, but a few key themes emerge: her unique use of materials, the inclusivity of her projects, nature, and her outsider status.
Her bold use of materials, color, and craft came from her experience of different worldviews.
Labeling her as “just” a modernist is misleading: As pointed out by Beatriz Colomina in her afterword “Trans-species Architecture,” the “paradox of Lina Bo ...
...is that she produced some of the most iconic works of modern architecture, but she also threatens the very idea of modernity and architecture itself.”
Sol Camacho, the Cultural Director of the Instituto Bardi/Casa de Vidro, reveals that Bo Bardi explored a variety of materials for her Glass House: At one point, ...
...the architect entertained wood columns on stone base, a stone stair, and exposed brick instead of the final slender, metallic staircase and whitewashed surfaces.
In her later works, she rejected bourgeois architecture in favor of modest materials, as would be evident in her reuse of abandoned sites and her ...
...work in Salvador, Bahia (like the Solar do Unhão, Casa do Benin, and Restaurante do Coaty), where she used concrete in a more spontaneous way.
The Casa de Vidro serves as a site of material experimentation, and its auxiliary buildings demonstrate how to thoughtfully integrate architecture with nature.
In Habitat—the magazine founded by Bo Bardi and her husband—she wrote that her residence “represents an attempt to arrive at a communion between nature and the natural order of things; [she looks] to respect ...
...this natural order, with clarity, and never like the closed house that runs away from the thunderstorm and the rain.” In her later projects she designed porous spaces that integrate the outdoors.
Jardim Morumbi, where the house is located, was a former tea farm, and the prior occupants had razed the native Atlantic ...
...Rainforest. Beyond her work as an architect, she was also an artist, activist, editor, designer, and writer.
Why are we so drawn to Bo Bardi’s work today? It is precisely the complexity of her character that allows for deeper readings of her work.
Lina Bo Bardi bewildered history’s authors, Colomina wrote, because she “doesn’t fit their narrow moralistic stories. She breaks free. She confuses the discipline. She opens new questions and keeps opening them because the reading ...
...of the work is only just beginning. For all the sudden celebrations in books, catalogs, exhibitions, films, etc. of the last 20 years, Lina Bo still surprises. Perhaps because what she really challenges is architecture itself.”