On the occasion of Italio-Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi's one hundredth birthday, this richly illustrated volume presents an overview of her oeuvre and highlights iconic buildings, such as her own home, the so-called Casa de Vidro, the Museo de Arte de Sao Paulo, and the cultural center SESC Pompeia. This is a spectacular book on a celebrated architect. Spanning architecture, stage sets, fashion, and furniture, her work drew inspiration from the International Style, which she translated into her own visual language. Fundamental to her work was her thoughtful engagement with her adopted country of Brazil, its culture, society, and politics, and she productively and provocatively voiced her sometimes radical views through designs, exhibitions, and writings.
From furniture and exhibition design to monumental domestic and public architectural projects, the breadth of Lina Bo Bardi's multidisciplinary work is showcased in this richly illustrated book. Lina Bo Bardi is regarded as one of the most important architects in Brazil's history. Beginning her career as a Modernist architect in Rome, Bo Bardi and her husband emigrated to Brazil following the end of WWII. Bo Bardi quickly resumed her practice in her adopted homeland with architecture that was both modern and firmly rooted in the culture of Brazil. In 1951 she designed "Casa de Vidro" ("Glass House"), her first built work, where she and her husband would live for the rest of their lives. She also designed the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (São Paulo Art Museum), a landmark of Latin American modernist architecture which opened in 1968. It was for this museum she created the iconic glass easel display system, which remains radical to date. This book presents a comprehensive record of Bo Bardi's overarching approach to art and architecture and shows how her exhibition designs, curatorial projects, and writing informed her spatial designs. Essays on Bo Bardi's life and work accompany archival material such as design sketches and writings by the artist, giving new insight into the conceptual and material processes behind this radical thinker and creator's projects. Published with MASP, Museo Jumex, and Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
"Twenty architects explored possible developments for the lot neighboring the Schindler House, a revolutionary architectural landmark located in West Hollywood, California. Their visionary ideas are combined in this book to uniquely demonstrate contemporary avant-garde architecture in an unusual line-up. Responding to the challenge that 'It is the architect's duty to offer resistance', [this book] explores the field of tension surrounding architecture, urbanism, and preservation today. It poses the following questions: Is a landmark such as the Schindler House singular, or is it tied to a complex network of relations and urban situations? Is context important to a landmark's intrinsic meaning? How do we measure the social significance of unparalleled historic works of architecture? To what degree do landmarks rely on their surrounding conditions?"--Back cover.
"The architect, Lina Bo Bardi (1914-1992), has long been considered one of the major modern architects of the twentieth century in Brazil. The Glass House (1951), a residence for herself and her husband, gained wide acclaim, appearing in architectural periodicals throughout 1953-54. Her iconic Museum of Art of Säao Paulo (1968), and the bold, Social Service for Commerce Building-Pompâeia, Säao Paulo (1986), have gained recognition in recent years and her reputation is beginning to be acknowledged internationally. Bo Bardi's major writings on architecture, however, have not been translated, and are not well known. This book contains the first English-language translation of Propeadeutic Contribution to the Teaching of Architecture Theory, (Habitat, Ltd. Säao Paulo, 1957), a seminal text, published in Portuguese by the Italo-Brazilian Bo Bardi. It is arguably the first published writing on architecture theory by a practicing woman architect. Accompanying the translation is an introductory essay that interprets Bo Bardi's text as a critical and constructive theory of architecture built from a collection of textual and visual artifacts. This translation clearly renders Bo Bardi's work in English, and contextualizes it theoretically, taking into account the specific historical sources and contemporaneous discourses from which it draws. With comparisons to other important architectural pedagogies and theoretical texts of the period, it is also an inquiry into the nature of architecture history and theory, its role in education and its relation to practice"--
The architect Lina Bo Bardi, who was born in Rome in 1914, emigrated in 1946 to Brazil, a country she adopted as her own and where she undertook her professional career. With its radical and modern focus, her entire work is pervaded by a wish to move closer to the way of life of the people and to local traditions by eliminating the distance between ‘elite’ and ‘popular culture’. Her projects have a conceptual, material and ethical forcefulness that is particularly apparent in her built work, all of which is included in this volume, together with photographs taken especially for it by Nelson Kon. Olivia de Oliveira introduces us to the work of Lina Bo Bardi through a multifaceted argument that allows us to contextualise and understand it in all its architectural, cultural, political and social complexity. This book - a reprint of the magazine 2G Lina Bo Bardi - ends with a 1991 interview and a selection of her writings.
In an era of brash, expensive, provocative new buildings, a prominent critic argues that emotions—such as hope, power, sex, and our changing relationship to the idea of home—are the most powerful force behind architecture, yesterday and (especially) today. We are living in the most dramatic period in architectural history in more than half a century: a time when cityscapes are being redrawn on a yearly basis, architects are testing the very idea of what a building is, and whole cities are being invented overnight in exotic locales or here in the United States. Now, in a bold and wide-ranging new work, Rowan Moore—former director of the Architecture Foundation, now the architecture critic for The Observer—explores the reasons behind these changes in our built environment, and how they in turn are changing the way we live in the world. Taking as his starting point dramatic examples such as the High Line in New York City and the outrageous island experiment of Dubai, Moore then reaches far and wide: back in time to explore the Covent Garden brothels of eighteenth-century London and the fetishistic minimalism of Adolf Loos; across the world to assess a software magnate’s grandiose mansion in Atlanta and Daniel Libeskind’s failed design for the World Trade Center site; and finally to the deeply naturalistic work of Lina Bo Bardi, whom he celebrates as the most underrated architect of the modern era.
A mammoth history of interior design and the way it shapes our lives, in 20 iconic interiors Our homes are an expression of how we want to live; they shape our everyday routines and fundamentally affect our well-being. Interior design for the home sustains a giant global industry and feeds an entire branch of the media. However, the question of dwelling, or how to live, is found increasingly to be lacking in serious discourse. This book sets out to review the interior design of our homes. It discusses 20 iconic residential interiors from the present back to the 1920s, by architects, artists and designers such as Assemble, Cecil Beaton, Lina Bo Bardi, Arno Brandlhuber, Elsie de Wolfe, Elii, Josef Frank, Andrew Geller, IKEA, Finn Juhl, Michael Graves, Kisho Kurokawa, Adolf Loos, Claude Parent, Bernard Rudofsky, Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, Alison and Peter Smithson, Jacques Tati, Mies van der Rohe and Andy Warhol. Including historic and recent photographs, drawings and plans, the book explores these case studies as key moments in the history of the modern interior. Penny Sparke provides a concise history of the discipline of interior design, Alice Rawsthorn investigates the role of gender, and Mark Taylor discusses the discourse on interior design in the 21st century. Adam Stech offers insights into the use of colour in residential interiors and Matteo Pirola offers a detailed and richly illustrated chronology of significant events in the history of interior design. In a portfolio of photographs selected exclusively for this book, Jasper Morrison explores what makes a good interior. In addition to interviews with contemporary interior design practitioners, experts in the fields of the sociology of living and psychology provide further insight. This book is a valuable resource for anyone interested in interior design.
A visual and global chronicle of the triumphs, challenges, and impact of over 100 women in architecture, from early practitioners to contemporary leaders. Marion Mahony Griffin passed the architectural licensure exam in 1898 and created exquisite drawings that buoyed the reputation of Frank Lloyd Wright. Her story is one of the many told in The Women Who Changed Architecture, which sets the record straight on the transformative impact women have made on architecture. With in-depth profiles and stunning images, this is the most comprehensive look at women in architecture around the world, from the nineteenth century to today. Discover contemporary leaders, like MacArthur Fellow Jeanne Gang, spearheading sustainable design initiatives, reimagining cities as equitable spaces, and directing architecture schools. An essential read for architecture students, architects, and anyone interested in how buildings are created and the history behind them.