Olivia de Oliveira

_____________________________________________ br” Prêmio Instituto de Arquitetos do Brasil: melhor livro de 2006 Finalist Pevsner Prize of The Royal Institute of British Architects > Finalist Prêmio Jabuti: best art and architecture book _____________________________________________ Lina Bo Bardi, the Rome-born architect, emigrated after World War Two to Brazil, a country where she undertook her professional career. The outcome of her personal experience and of a wish to get closer to the culture and ways of life of the people, Bo Bardi’s creativity moved in the direction of an architecture that prized simplicity, spontaneity, the residual and the ephem-eral; an architecture understood as 'an organism suitable for life' which incorporated everydayness and the energy of the people who use it. As a result she used the word substances’, rather than materials’, to explain what her architecture was made of. These substances are air, light, nature and art, to which the author, Olivia de Oliveira, adds time. The work of Lina Bo Bardi, then, is presented here via a huge array of previously unpublished drawings, images, writings and projects that enable the reader to grasp in a kaleidoscopic way the power and current importance of her architecture as a critical confrontation with established reality.

The Architecture of Lina Bo Bardi

Subtle Substances

Lina Bo Bardi

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.

Olivia de Oliveira

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