Lina Bo Bardi: The Latest Architecture and News

Architectural photographer and filmmaker Romullo Fontenelle of Studio Flagrante shared his latest video featuring Lina Bo Bardi's concrete and glass easels and the spatial dynamics they create in the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP). The easels, first introduced in 1968, were brought back to life after a redesign by Metro Arquitetos.

For some practitioners of architecture, the insatiable desire to draw everything, from the largest to the smallest to take full control of the project, echoes the famous phrase uttered by Mies Van Der Rohe: "God is in the details." Similarly, designing furniture provides another creative outlet for in-depth exploration of human-scale works of architecture.

Throughout the history of the Brazilian Architecture, and especially since the modernist movement, architects not only became known for their building designs, but also for their detailed chairs and tables. Several of these pieces of furniture were initially designed for a specific project and then went into mass production due to their popularity. 

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Mid-century modern visionaries, Albert Frey and Lina Bo Bardi are exhibited together at the Palm Springs Art Museum for an unprecedented show of models, drawings, design objects, and photographs, opened this fall and will remain on exhibit through January 7, 2018.

The exhibit A Search for Living Architecture explores the shared belief of Albert Frey and Lina Bo Bardi, that architecture is a way to connect people, nature, building, and living. The mid-century show-stoppers are highlighted in the installation design by Bestor Architecture.

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The Teatro Oficina Uzyna Uzona, popularly known as Teatro Oficina, located on Jaceguai Street, in the Bela Vista neighborhood, in São Paulo, was founded in 1958 by José Celso Martinez Correa. The Teatro Oficina acts as a manifesto/theater, marked by great spectacles between theatrical expressions, musical presentations, dance, and performances.

Over time, the theater sought to revolutionize the performances that they put on. To this end, the architecture was designed to "collaborate" with the events, allowing the drama of the spectacle to engage more profoundly with audiences. Edson Elito, who would later instigate this reform, said [trans.]:

Videos

How many lives does a great work of architecture have? The first begins when it is built and inhabited, judged based on the quality of life it provides for its residents. The second comes generations later when it becomes historically significant and perhaps its original function no longer suits the demands of society. The value of such buildings is that they inform us about the past and for that reason their conservation is necessary.

However, in Latin America, there are countless cases of buildings of great architectural value that are in tragic states of neglect and deterioration. Seven such examples are:

“Concrete has the ability to be primitive and technological, massive and levitating, to combine the properties of steel with those of mud,” says Rowan Moore in his list of The 10 best concrete buildings created for The Guardian. Through examples spanning three continents, Moore unites old standbys with unexpected wonders, all of which show the varied possibilities inherent in mixing water, aggregate, and cement. In a list that incorporates examples from Classical times to the present, Moore establishes concrete’s unique ability to adapt to different times, styles, applications, and treatments.

Examples by Le Corbusier, Álvaro Siza, Lina Bo Bardi, and Marcel Breuer demonstrate that concrete is anything but workaday or utilitarian. Moore’s list affirms that a material simultaneously strong and light, durable, sustainable, and fire-resistant, can scarcely be considered anything short of miraculous. Of course, ten buildings can only provide an abridged version of concrete’s possibilities, and Moore cheekily apologizes for some of the obvious omissions. Check out the full list here.

ArchDaily is continuing our partnership with Radical Pedagogies, an ongoing multi-year collaborative research project led by Beatriz Colomina with a team of PhD students of the School of Architecture at Princeton University, presenting a series of paradigmatic cases in architectural education. In this fourth example of Radical Pedagogies in Latin America, Vanessa Grossman (PhD Candidate in History and Theory of Architecture at Princeton University) presents Lina Bo Bardi's application for a chair at the Faculty of Architecture and Urban Studies of the University of São Paulo. Although the application was rejected by the faculty commission, the submitted essay still is a singular source of new ideas for architectural education.

"We performed hitherto a sort of tour throughout time and throughout the “theories” of architecture, dwelling upon one of the aspects and modes of interpretation: the critical aspect. But the experience of teaching has led us to assume, among students, a certain impatience. This impatience we know very well: it means that we no longer feel the sap flowing from the past, that we have almost constitutionally “cut the roots,” that the natural habit of a calm and methodical study no longer exists, despite the consciousness of an acquired cultural heritage. It is the impatience of those who no longer want to know things that do not produce a result soon, of things that do not serve solutions to the problems of immediate life."

—Lina Bo Bardi, Introduction to “Problems of Method,” the second and final chapter of Propaedeutic Contribution to the Teaching of Architecture Theory (1957) [p. 45 in the 1992 Brazilian edition].

Text description provided by the architects. The design of the Lina em Casa: Percursos (Lina at Home: Journeys) exhibition was developed with the intention of preserving the spatial experience and the unique atmosphere of Casa de Vidro (Glass House). Understanding the House as the principle legacy of the architect on display and a major object of interest for visitors, the organization of the exhibition stands avoids creating spatial subdivisions that could detract from the building’s architecture. 

From April 25 through July 25, 2015, the Graham Foundation will host an exhibition at its Madlener House showcasing the vision of Italian-Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi. Known for her emphasis on social modernism and expressive use of materials, Lina Bo Bardi: Together explores her legacy through her collected works, as well as that of other artists paying homage to the architect and striving to generate new conversations about her designs. Curated by Noemi Blager, the exhibition features photographs, films, and artistic objects reflecting Bo Bardi's diverse work and immersion in Brazilian culture.

To celebrate International Women’s Day, we asked the Brazilian non-profit group Arquitetas Invisíveis to share with us a part of their work, which identifies women in architecture and urbanism. They kindly shared with us a list of 48 important women architects, divided into seven categories: pioneers, “in the shadows,” architecture, landscape architecture, social architecture, urbanism and sustainable architecture. We will be sharing this list over the course of the week.

Today we present women architects who stand out for the quality of their work. 

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Videos

Following our top 40 Architecture Docs to Watch in 2014 and our favourite 30 Architecture Docs to Watch in 2013, 2015 is no exception! Our latest round up continues to feature a fantastic range of films and documentaries telling the tales of unsung architectural heroes and unheard urban narratives from around the world. This entirely fresh selection looks past the panoply of stars to bring you more of the best architectural documentaries which will provoke, intrigue and beguile.

From a film which explores one man's dream to build a cathedral (#4) and a simultaneous history of and vision of Rotterdam's future (#7), to a tour of the world's last surviving squatter town in Copenhagen (#14) and A Short History of Abandoned Sets in Morocco (#16), we present - in no particular order - thirty freshly picked documentaries for you to watch in 2015.

In a three day pilot workshop, students from the Architecture and Urbanism School of Mackenzie Presbyterian University in São Paulo took part in an introduction to architecture filmmaking. Coordinated by architects Gabriel Kogan and Pedro Kok, the group spent a day at Lina Bo Bardi's Glass House in São Paulo following theoretical and technical lectures.

The idea was to recreate – now in moving images – an iconic photograph of the site  by exploring issues of representation, transparency, interior/exterior, promenades, ways of living and the tectonics of this architectural masterpiece.

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The Italian furniture brand Arper recently reissued Lina Bo Bardi's signature Bowl Chair. The pioneering project of the Brazilian-Italian architect presents a more relaxed approach to "sitting" - one that was fairly radical when it was originally released in 1951. The reissue of the chair - presented at the Salone del Mobile 2013 - is a testament to the forward-thinking vision of the architect.

Arper, who worked in partnership with the Instituto Lina Bo e P.M. Bardi to produce the Bowl Chair, based the design on the original prototype drawings. The genius of the chair is in its simple execution: consisting of two loose parts - an upholstered shell on a metal structure - the seat remains free to move in all directions. It is a chair for living, not just for sitting, and (as with all of Bo Bardi's works) places the human at the center of the design.

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