Lina Bo Bardi: Why stones are worth more than diamonds

Central Image Source: nilufar.com

Innovative design by a multifaceted spirit: this phrase could very well describe in brevity Lina Bo Bardi’s work but we know it wouldn’t do justice to the artistic contributions of the Italian artist -and in her case, the word artist is literal. The goal of her many years of work was not only the creation of new, modern designs of all kinds, but the highlighting of the past through them. Not, however, a lifeless past, but a past that is reconciled with and integrated into the present. After all, for her, the line between before and now is so thin, almost faint and imperceptible, that it is lost in the final result.

We will try to showcase some of her very interesting work, like establishing and editing design magazines, creating furniture and designing Casa de Vidro. 

Preserving cultural legacy

Born in Rome in 1914, she couldn’t have remained unaffected by Italy’s cultural legacy. The various monuments scattered all over the city offered a unique opportunity to understand that the old and the new could - and many times they have to - coexist in the city, bestowing character and life to it. Upon completing her studies, in 1939, at the School of Architecture of the University of Rome, Bo Bardi decided to move further north, to Milan, to work with Carlo Pagani. Her work from here on does not focus purely on architectural design but on a kind of design journalism since she will also go on to collaborate with Gio Ponti on the magazine Lo Stille. During the last few years of WWII, while working for Domus, she decides along with Carlo Pagani and photographer Federico Patellani to travel all over Italy to photograph and document the disasters wrought by the war, which were then published in detail in A: Attualità, Architettura, Abitazione, Arte, created by her, Pagani and art critic Bruno Zevi.

Magazine cover (1946) | Image source: pbs.twimg.com

However, Bo Bardi’s aim wasn’t to simply publicise and showcase the destruction but to trigger a discussion regarding the restoration and preservation of the destroyed buildings, two different procedures that equally contribute to respecting and highlighting the historical significance of the past that is imprinted on every building, regardless of its antiquity. After all, cultural heritage issues had already preoccupied her since her early years at the university, having attended monument restoration courses with Gustavo Giovannoni, long before such issues were brought to the fore by the Venice Charter, in 1964.

Casa de Vidro, Museu de Arte de São Paulo and Bahia

In 1946 she moved permanently with her husband to Brazil. Four years later, in 1950, she founded the architecture and design magazine Habitat, which she would continue to publish until 1953, turning it into the most important modern architecture and design publication in the country.

Image source: portal.institutobardi.org

Despite her intense engagement in journalism, she never ceased designing. Upon her arrival in the country, she was asked - after Assis Chateaubriand’s suggestion- to contribute to the design of the Museu de Arte de São Paulo, MASPI. So, Lina Bo Bardi assumed the design of the interior space and the method of exhibiting, innovatively disrupting the given of exhibiting paintings on the walls, freeing the exhibits and placing them in the middle of the space, floating, visible from everywhere (unfortunately this proposal was destroyed in 1990). In addition, she designed the chairs for the museum's conference rooms, made of Jacaranda wood and leather. The final result was quite elegant, alluding to the country's tradition of using local raw materials, but it also had an ergonomic design, since the chairs could be folded and easily stored.

MASP chair (Lina Bo Bardi, 1947) | Image source: nilufar.com

She continued designing furniture in the following years. For example, the Chair with Brass Balls (1951 design) is a distinctive specimen of the combination of industrial and traditional elements, using at the same time a metal frame and leather surfaces, while the Bowl chair, designed in the same year, follows more strictly a modern typology. 

Chair with Brass Balls | Image source: lux-mag.com

In 1951 she also designed the Casa de Vidro, which was intended for her and her husband. As its name suggests, the facade of the house - quite reminiscent of Le Corbusier's Curutchet House and Villa Savoye - is made of glass and thin metal support pillars since her aim was an unhindered view of nature. At the same time, the floor plan of the house follows the same “open” approach, while the rest of the spaces are restricted to the back of the house, built with bricks to ensure the privacy of the residents. Inside, the different objects, strategically scattered around the space, create the sense of a well-calculated exhibition space. Of course, the aesthetics are completely aligned with the Modernist movement and its relation to tradition and nature.

Casa de Vidro | Image source: video-images.vice.com

At the end of 1950, she moved to Salvador (a region of Bahia), an area quite poor but with a strong cultural heritage. There, Bo Bardi gave several lectures at the School of Fine Arts of the city's university, while in 1959 she was commissioned to create the Museum of Modern Art. It was housed in the old salt mill, Solar do Unhão, which was restored in 1963 and it was decided to also house a museum of folk art and a Fine Arts school in the same building.

The staircase added by Lina Bo Bardi | Image source: harpersbazaar.uol.com.br

In 1968, she returns to São Paulo due to the political turmoil of the time. However, this return would signify a new design approach. The new current, dubbed Arquitetura Povera by her, deploys simple and local materials and aesthetics that allude to Brazilian culture. Some of her works, like the pews for the Chapel of São Paulo (1978) or SESC chair (1980), constitute distinctive examples of her turn, almost exclusively, to wood and a more unpretentious design. 

SESC chair | Image source: side-gallery.com

The legacy and the powerful role model

Lina Bo Bardi’s work was not limited and could express the many facets of the 20th-century society, culture and history. She was influenced by culture and tradition, and contributed to their promotion, always respecting the unique conditions that define them. In that way, Bo Bardi’s work can be a strong example of how contemporary architecture and design can be influenced by different traditions, without, however, spoiling them or resulting in their appropriation as it often happens today. The Italian artist showed us the way to look at tradition. Now we just have to put it into practice. 

Sources/ Further reading

Lina Bo Bardi. From: britannica.com.

S. Camacho (2020). Retrospective: Lina Bo Bardi. From: architectural-review.com.

More on Lina Bo Bardi’s work at: portal.institutobardi.org.