Lina Bo Bardi

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Lina Bo Bardi (Born Achillina Bo on December 5, 1914 in Rome, Italy — Died March 20, 1992 in São Paulo) was an Italian- Brazilian modernist architect.

After graduating in Rome, she began her career in the office of Giò Ponti in Milan before opening her own office. She did not have many commissions and, in 1943, her office was destroyed by aerial bombing. The event prompted her deeper involvement in the Italian Communist Party. She spent the years following the war documenting destruction across Italy, participating in the National Congress for Reconstruction. She also founded a weekly magazine, A Cultura della Vita, with Bruno Zevi. After the war she married Pietro Maria Bardi.

[edit] Career in Brazil

In 1946 Bo Bardi moved with her husband to Brazil, a country which had a profound effect on her creative thinking. She became a naturalized citizen in 1951, the same year she completed her first built work, her own "Glass House" in the new neighborhood of Morumbi. Here, the Italian rationalism shaped this first work, but immersed in Brazilian culture her creative thinking began to become more expressive. She became famous for the ample spaces she sought to construct. The São Paulo Museum of Art, of which her husband Pietro Maria Bardi was curator, was built to her basic design. And when she died she left designs for a new São Paulo City Hall and a Cultural Centre for Vera Cruz.

[edit] References

• Biography at the Instituto Lina Bo e Pietro M. Bardi
• Meyer, Esther da Costa. (Winter/Spring 2002) "After the Flood". Harvard Design Magazine. No. 16
• Profile of Bardi for Exhibition at Museum of Design, Zurich
• Profile of Bardi for Exhibition at Civic Museums of Venice

Persondata
NAME	Bardi, Lina Bo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Bardi, Achillina Bo; Bo, Achillina;Bardi, Lina
SHORT DESCRIPTION	architect
DATE OF BIRTH	December 5, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH	Rome, Italy
DATE OF DEATH	March 20, 1992
PLACE OF DEATH	São Paulo, Brazil