Lina Bo Bardi – a life of passionate projects

Some say Lina Bo Bardi, one of Brazil’s greatest architects, is currently having a resurgence. Others baulk at the idea she ever went out of fashion.

Born in 1914 Italy, Bo Bardi blazed a diverse trail from a young age; working as a designer, entrepreneur and newspaper editor before opening her own architectural firm in Milan aged just 28.

Sadly the young architect’s office was bombed during World War II. Clearly affected by the loss, Bo Bardi ended up taking a job touring Italy to document the destruction of the war – affirming her anti-fascist sentiments along the way.

In 1946 Bo Bardi married her eventual collaborator and the man who would introduce her to her beloved Brazil: Pietro Maria Bardi. Pietro was an art dealer and critic who saw Brazil as an exciting new market for his work, and the couple was having a hard time in Italy as participants of the resistance movement.

Bo Bardi’s more notable works offer a combination of styles difficult to classify. They are stark, but with unique detailing; intimidating and yet built for human interaction.

As a humanist, Bo Bardi wanted her spaces to be useful rather than simply ornamental. According to a 2015 Bo Bardi exhibition curator, she desperately wanted “to put people in the centre of the project”.

In 1951, Bo Bardi completed ‘The Glass House’ – a dreamy manifestation of her and Pietro’s dream of living inside an aquarium. Set on a hill amongst the thick bush of Morumbi, Sao Paolo, the house was built as if intended as a gallery. And fulfilling that prophecy, the two stories of open-plan living now house the couple’s artistic archive, which is open to the public for the first time in many years.

Sem Título (Casa de Vidro), Daniel Jacobino

Furniture, jewellery, drawings and designs on display affirm Bo Bardi’s many talents and passions over a half-century of work. Much of the couple’s personal art collection is also on display.

Floor to ceiling windows give the house its name, while the house’s severe and yet elegant cubism, when lit up at night amongst the outside bushland, make for a vulnerable presence – the kind of residence targeted in horror films.

Sem Título (Casa de Vidro), Daniel Jacobino

Another of Bo Bardi’s seminal works, the SESC Pompéia, remains a social and cultural centre in Sao Paolo for old men to play chess and others to practise theatre or swimming.

Lina Bo Bardi, SESC Pompéia,
Paulisson Miura

The SESC remains perhaps Bardi’s most striking and recognisable work. At once blockish and labyrinthine, the building combined a disused red brick drum factory with three brutalist concrete towers, all connected by aerial walkways.

The building, with its mix of dull grey concrete and vibrant red brick, shocked the Brazil of 1982, which had just emerged from decades of dictatorship and a period of dulled architectural activity.

Lina Bo Bardi, SESC Pompéia,
Paulisson Miura

Sesc Pompeia, Camila Cociña

Much like the Pompidou Centre in Paris, Bardi’s SESC challenged as much as it impressed, and was not easily pinned down as any one style.

Perhaps the architect’s most visited space is the Sao Paolo Museum of Art, completed in 1968. Again, Bo Bardi combined the communist-era grey concrete with unmissable flashes of red.

Not afraid of pushing her own agenda, Bo Bardi is said to have brokered a “back room” deal with a local governor to land the project, before refusing to cave to political pressure for the design.

MASP – Museu de Arte de São Paulo, Rodrigo Soldon

Something she did adhere to was the request not to break up the site’s panoramic views of the city – something she managed by omitting a midsection a midsection altogether, with half the building above and half under it.

Bo Bardi’s legacy in Brazil puts her amongst its greatest architects, and although she distanced herself from the feminist movement, Bo Bardi’s achievements – and her strong-willed personality – in mid-20th century Europe inspired a generation of architects. Lina Bo Bardi and Pietro Maria Bardi both passed away in 1992.

Words: Rose Donohoe