On Monday, International Women's Day, it was announced that Lina Bo Bardi will receive the Special Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in memoriam at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.
Postponed from 2020 to this year because of Coronavirus, the Biennale, scheduled to open to the public on 22nd May, is curated by Hashim Sarkis, who recommended the Italian architect, designer, scenographer, artist and critic for the award.
Born in Rome in 1914, Achillina Bo, simply known as Lina, studied architecture at La Sapienza in Rome and then moved to Milan where she met Gio Ponti and started writing for various architectural and lifestyle magazines including Lo Stile, Grazia, L'Illustrazione Italiana, Bellezza, Vetrina e Negozio, Cordelia and Tempo.
In the ‘40s she co-directed Domus with Carlo Pagani and with the support of Bruno Zevi she created the weekly magazine A-Attualità, Architettura, Abitazione, Arte. A member of the Resistance, she was also one of the founders of the Movimento Studi Architettura (MSA).
In 1947 Lina moved to Brazil with her husband - critic, art historian, journalist and gallery owner Pietro Maria Bardi. Between 1957 and 1969 she built the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP), a large concrete and glass parallelepiped that appears suspended in the void, 8 metres above ground, supported by two giant red pillars.
Among her most iconic interior design pieces there's the Bowl Chair, designed in 1951, while one of her most famous projects remains her home in São Paulo, the Casa de Vidro, a Modernist glass box built on a hill immersed in the tropical forest, which over time has become completely integrated into the landscape (today, the house is the headquarters of the Instituto Bardi).
Between 1977 and 1986 she designed the social centre SESC–Fábrica da Pompéia in São Paulo that should be an inspiration for all architects who are thinking about design in a post-Covid world.
Bo Bardi adapted indeed the old oil drums factory radically transforming it, turning the brutalist interconnected concrete buildings into a series of creative spaces.
The buildings were transformed into a giant interconnected community, a recreational, cultural and sports centre with theatres, libraries, workshops for photography, ceramics and other artistic activities, music studios and dance spaces, with basketball courts and other spaces for team sports.
In the last ten years of her life, Lina Bo Bardi worked on several projects aimed at the renewal of Brazilian architecture, including the Teatro Oficina.
There are a lot of aspects we may want to rediscover about Bo Bardi: first and foremost how to create buildings characterised by flexibility and a sense of community like the Pompéia Drum Works building.
Then her vision for experimental museum exhibitions and her desire to create flexible, accessible and inclusive open spaces with movable walls and transpartent supports, displays that showed a democratic approach, encouraged social interaction and produced shock and curiosity in the visitors.
The theme of the 17th International Architecture Exhibition - "How will we live together?" - finds answers in the work of Lina Bo Bardi: through her work she strengthened the relationship between nature and architecture; she researched ways to open up spaces (think about the way she dissolved all the boundaries between the actors and the audience in her project for the Teatro Oficina) and conceived architecture as a civil commitment, a collective service.
While in the last few years there have been attempts at rediscovering her with exhibitions and events, the world of fashion was quicker to homage Lina Bo Bardi with designers subtly channelling the interconnected brutalism of the SESC in their designs (Xavier Brisoux), and with collections inspired by her geometries or by her tropical moods (Max Mara S/S 17) or that featured motifs that seemed lifted from her architectural designs (Noir Kei Ninomiya S/S 16).
The Golden Lion is the first major international acknowledgment Lina Bo Bardi receives posthumously. "If there is one architect who embodies most fittingly the theme of the Biennale Architettura 2021, it is Lina Bo Bardi," Sarkis stated in a press release.
"Her career as a designer, editor, curator, and activist reminds us of the role of the architect as convener and importantly, as the builder of collective visions. Lina Bo Bardi also exemplifies the perseverance of the architect in difficult times whether wars, political strife, or immigration, and her ability to remain creative, generous, and optimistic throughout. Above all, it is her powerful buildings that stand out in their design and in the way that they bring architecture, nature, living, and community together. In her hands, architecture becomes truly a convening social art."
The Instituto Bardi from São Paulo, deeply honoured and grateful about the award, adds: "The phenomenal life and work of Lina Bo Bardi has long addressed the central question of this year's International Architecture Exhibition: How will we live together? Sadly, as has been true for public spaces the world over, the global pandemic has undermined the use of the iconic public places she designed in Brazil that have been serving communities and citizens for decades (...) We hope that the 2021 edition of La Biennale – rather than inflate her popularity as an architectural icon - will help to even better contextualize and communicate the depth of Lina Bo Bardi’s critical view of the world: always caring for the least culturally represented, consistently aware of the importance of diversity in art and architecture, and committed to a multidisciplinary approach to architecture bringing together people from all walks of life."
If you want to prepare for her celebrations in Venice, try re-reading some of her articles and essays published on "Habitat", !Domus" or "Diário de Notícias" that, though written a few decades ago, may still provide you with some thoughts and inspirations about contemporary themes and issues, among the others you may want to check "Houses or Museums?" (1958), "Industrial Art" (1958) or "Technology and Art" (1960).
The acknowledgment to Lina Bo Bardi will be celebrated on Saturday May 22nd 2021 during the inauguration ceremony for the Biennale Architettura 2021. In the past the Special Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in memoriam was awarded to Japanese architect Kazuo Shinohara in 2010, upon recommendation by Kazuyo Sejima, curator of the Biennale Architettura that year.
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