BARDI, Lina Bo - Stones-Against-Diamonds

ARCHITECTURE WORDS 12
LINA BO BARDI
STONES AGAINST DIAMONDS
PREFACE
This anthology provides a first-ever English compilation

of the writings, criticism and cultural observations of
Lina Bo Bardi - a startling visionary of modern architecture,
and someone whose own lived example of exchanging
European (in Bo Bardi's case, Italian) origins for a Latin
American life was among the most extreme examples
of one of architecture's most under-analysed conditions
(marlked by such peculiar episodes as Hannes Meyer's later
career in Mexico, Mies's headquarters for multinationals
like Bacardi, or the most schizophrenic of all of modern
architecture's translations, between the ideas of Le Corbusier
and the no less monumental works of Niemeyer and Costa).
It was, I suspect, the intensely self-conscious qualities of
Bo Bardi's lived experience as an ex-pat that fuelled her
wariness towards the received accounts of both her own
architecture and the emerging Brazilian scene around her.
At the tender age of 25, prior to her departure to Brazil,
Bo Bardi found herself editing the great Italian journal
Domus, a position which enabled her own architectural
production to deal in texts, articles and essays as much
as it did in concrete and glass. It also provided her with
a medium with which to challenge the very confidence
(for her, perhaps over-confidence) of modern architecture
itself. 'Make no mistake', she writes in 1951, 'formulaic does
not just apply to historicism, it also extends (even more
dangerously) to the so-called "modern"- modernism as

a 'habit'.' Later, as she settled into her adoptive homeland,
this caution continued to strike at the heart of her
capacity to push past conventions of every kind. This was
complemented by her instinctive questioning of North
America's cultural imperialism (for example, her dismissal
of C Ray Smith, American architectural magazines
and cultural outposts like MoMA) through which we
can see how Bo Bardi was able to assemble such a
distinctive voice out of a fundamentally contrarian view
of modernist hegemony.
In 1944, just prior to her Latin American departure,
Bo Bardi writes: 'How can we achieve a coherent fusion
of form and life in our intentions?' One might say that
the remarkable career of the architect herself was the only
possible or meaningful answe r to this youthful curiosity,
formed as it was by the sustained production of concrete
words as much as it was by her buildings. Demonstrating
a dedicated pursuit of short, sharp essays (her preferred
medium seems to be a two- or three-page aside, usually
written around a very specific incident, event or experience),
the following collection is a marvellous addition to our
own Architecture Words series. My thanks here to Silvana
Rubino for an insightful introduction; to Marcelo Carvalho
Ferraz for a very personal afterword; and to the AA:s own
Ana Araujo for all her efforts assisting with this book and
the accompanying exhibition. Here's to Una's century and
our collective architectural destiny of global modernism,
exchange and change.
Brett Steele, Series Editor, Architecture Words

Architecture Wo-rds is a series of texts and important

essays on architecture written by architects, c�itics
and scholars. Like many aspects of everyday life,
contemporary architectural culture is dominated by an
endless production and consumption of images, graphics
and information. Rather than mirror this larger force,
this series of small books seeks to deflect it by means
of direct language, concise editing and beautiful, legible
graphic design. Each volume in the series offers the reader
texts that distil important larger issues and problems.
The words are edited and the pages designed in a way
that acknowledges the ability of graphic and printed
forms to communicate architectural idea si not only the
ideas contained within each volume, but also the enduring
power of written ideas more generally to challenge and
change the way all architects think.
Brett Steele
Director, AA School and AA Publications
Architectural Association
aaschool.ac.uk/publications
CONTENTS
3. INTRODUCTION: SILVANA RUBINO
THE ITALIAN YEARS
21. ARCHITECTURE AND NATURE
27. THE DESIGN OF INTERIORS
ARRIVAL IN BRAZIL
35. STONES AGAINST DIAMONDS
37. BEAUTIFUL CHILD
39. TWO BUILDINGS BY OSCAR NIEMEYER
41. WINDOW DISPLAYS
43. HOUSE IN MORUMBI
MOVE TO BAHIA
49. THEORY AND PHILOSOPHY

OF ARCHITECTURE
54. CULTURE AND NON-CULTURE
57. ARCHITECTURE OR ARCHITECTURE
59. HOUSES OR MUSEUMS?

61. THE INVASION
64. THE MOON
66. INDUSTRIAL ART
68. TECHNOLOGY AND ART
it THE NORTHEAST
BACK IN SAO PAULO
77. WHAT'S HAPPENING AFTER CORBU?
81. THE NEW TRIANON
86. 'DESIGN' AT AN IMPASSE
91. ARCHITECTURE AND TECHNOLOGY
97. THE ARCHITECTURAL PROJECT
1 03. INTENSIVE THERAPY
INTERVIEWS, SPOKEN WORD
109. AN ARCHITECTURAL LESSON
127. AFTERWORD:
MARCELO CARVALHO FERRAZ
INTRODUCTION
BY SILVANA RUBINO
When the Almirante Jaceguay made port in Rio de Janeiro

in 1946, an Italian couple disembarked, carrying in their
baggage no small number of paintings: the man was
a gallery-owner and art critic who since the 1930s had
nmtured the idea of bringing culture to Italian immigrants
in South America. But they carried something else with
them too. The woman, his wife, brought the desire to
create modern architecture in a young nation - one that
had no bad habits and no ruins. As she later declared, the
Education Ministry building, seen from the ocean, seemed
to welcome them on their arrival in the Brazilian capital.
Just as Le Corbusier's Centrosoyus could only have been
built in the Soviet Union, so Rio de Janeiro was the only
possible home for this modern Corbusian construction
by Lucio Costa and his team. Its b·rises-soleil and columns
signalled the possibilities of the new world. To be sure,
this was not the same kind of lure that had attracted waves
of migrants from Europe; rather, it was the promise of a
different intellectual and institutional order- one in which
modern architecture seemed not just a distinct possibility
but an inevitability or, as Mario Pedrosa puts it, a fate.
The couple were Pietro Maria Bardi and Lina Bo Bardi,
and the paintings they brought with them would be
exhibited in that same Ministry building, which suggests
that, besides the canvases themselves, they also came with
estabilished contacts. The Bardis were well connected in
Italy. P M Bardi was a journalist and contributor to various
important periodicals, including L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui.
He had covered the 1933 ClAM Congress on the SS Patris.
3
One of the art world's self-made men, an art critic and a

dealer, he had even held the post of advisor to Mussolini,
part of a group of artists and architects who were
attempting to define the official style to be adopted by
the fascist regime.
Lina Bo Bardi was born Achillina di Enrico Bo,
the eldest daughter of a professional engineer and Sunday
painter. Her comfortable background, combined with
her education, enabled her to become an architect. Along
with her solid training in 'scientific' restoration at the
Scuola Superiore di Architettura in Rome, she acquired
more contemporary skills from the Roman and Milanese
circles in which she moved, and from the Italian journals
she read and contributed to as a writer and illustrator.
Her move to Brazil gave her the first opportunity to build.
Her projects are striking and emblematic; they have
become symbols of Sao Paulo and the state of Salvador.
But they are also relatively few in number. Not so much
to compensate for this, and more as an integral part of
her work, she continued to write intensively.
Because architects do write: they create presentations
and descriptions to explain their works, and produce
manifestos in which they set out their own position,
or praise or denounce the architecture of the past. If, as
Heinrich Wolfflin puts it, paintings owe more to other
paintings than to reality itself} then architectural projects
also maintain a dialogue with each other, even when they
justify their existence with reference to external factors.
Le Corbusier, perhaps the most important architect of
the twentieth century, wrote over 50 books. Whenever
he was prevented from actually making buildings,
he turned to drawing, writing and talking as a way
of ensuring that his architectural ideas would continue
to circulate. Although it may seem counterintuitive in
a profession that presents its work to the world through
images, models, lines and sections, writing is not some
kind of secondary activity to be taken up only when the
central task -the building project - is out of reach. A great
part of the debate on architecture during the twentieth
4
INTRODUCTION
century was carried out i n print. As we can see from two

critical moments-the emergence of the modern movement
i n the 1910s and the 1920s, and of postmodernism in the
mid-196os-articles and manifestos played an undeniably
important role, developing the debate by dlaloguing with
each other. Different magazines championed different sides
in the disputes between the modern and the traditional,
the nationalist and the internationalist, the rationalist
and tine organic. These symbolic clashes, enacted in part
in writing, have woven the fabric of architecture, reinforced
it or torn it apart, over the last 100 years.
Just as it is impossible to imagine the construction
of architectural modernism without buildings such as the
Villa Savoye or the Fagus Factory, so we could never define
the movement without taking into account the ClAM
congresses and the position papers and charters that issued
from them -however imperfect these documents may have
been, penned by too many hands, and in too many
versions. The written manifesto has played a crucial role.2
CouId we conceive of the formation of architectural
modernism without the words of Adol£ Loos in Ornament
and Crime? Or without the crucial definition of the role of
the architect as set out by Gropius in The New Architecture
and the Bauhaus? Or even without the anecdotes and
aphorisms that pepper Le Corbusier's Towards a New
Architecture? If projects expanded our range of references
and changed our views, it was writing that gave modem
architects a new vocabulary and the means to change
the way we talk about architecture. The modern gaze
was constructed not just by built manifesto-houses and
exhibitions, but by texts and illustrated magazines.
At various times during the twentieth century the
architectural world found an influential spokesperson,
a guide to the universe of written culture. Sigfried Giedion,
Secretary General of ClAM and author of the seminal
text Space, Time, and Architecture, fulfilled this role, as
did Gilberto Freyre in Brazil, who took the admired
propositions of Lucio Costa and translated them into the
terms of sociology. Their writings built bridges between
5
architects and other professionals, and between architects

themselves; they defined what architecture was and what
it should be. Publications also played a part in the teaching
at schools, whether in a for mali sed way, as at the Bauhaus
or Vkhutemas, or more nominally, as at Sao Paulo and Rio.
The power of these texts derived from an obvious source:
the i mmobility that is the essence of t he architectural
object. These are texts that organise the world of architecture
di scur sively - an imaginar y global museum of architecture
se parating the exemplary from the prosaic, identifying
what is rele vant in projects that would otherwise go
unnotic ed defining what belongs in archit ect u re and
,
what should have no place in it.3

Paper architecture, written architecture, stimulated
a debate with a high degree of autonomy. This much
was evident in the 196os, when a row broke out that
threatened to undermine modernism- or certain strands
of it- during a period when it had been caught off guard
by its own p ost war success and by the crisis at ClAM that
gave rise to Team 10. Between 1961 and 1972 -between
The Death and Life ofGreat American Cities by the journalist
Jane J aco bs and Learningfrom Las Vegas by Robert Venturi,
Oenise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour- various
aspects of modernism were su bjec ted to a concerted
challenge. The role of h is tor y and memory in cities, the
relations hi p between form and f u nc tion the balance
,
between the wishes of the end-user and the grand vision

of the architect, the value of the everyday know-how of
vernacular construction versus specialised technic al
knowledge- all came under scrutiny. This fertile, hard
fought debate, which also drew in figures such as Aldo
Rossi and Hassan Fathy, was above all else a battle, a duel
fought in writing - a fact that in no way diminished its
capacity to sift the contents of the mo dern movement and
pronounce some works 'classics' and others 'beyond the
pal e . This expansion of the architectural discourse brought
'
about a secon d symbolic revolutio n in the architecture

of the twentieth century- the first revolution being without
doubt the decade of the modernist mani fes tos .
6
INTRODUCTION
The experience of Lina Bo Bardi falls within this

frame. She belonged to a second generation of modern
architects who would advance the modernist cause
until the movement ran headlong into revision and the
turbulence of postmodernism. Bo Bardi is considered
by many to be an architect of extreme originality. The
following selection of her writings may reaffirm this,
but it also shows that her works typically reflect modern
architecture's ambition to design everything from the
teaspoon to the city as a whole. One thing that marks
her out, however, is her forceful presence in Italian and
Brazilian publications, and given the scarcity of her built
work- which is in inverse proportion to its importance -
a reading of her articles provides an interesting route
by which to approach her architecture.
However this is not the only way in which this
collection can be read. Bo Bardi's immersion in the
architectural debate in Italy and Brazil, her privileged
position in the world of publishing and her network
of contacts all make her writings a guide to the currents
of twentieth-century architectural discourse, which also
includes the modern architect's view of the built legacy
of the past. The texts presented here could be seen as a
platform from which to follow the dilemmas and debates
that gripped the field of architecture and ran through
Brazilian culture from the 1940s up to 1992, the year the
half-Roman, half-Bahian architect passed away in Sao
Paulo, in the midst of a project for mayor Luiza Erundina.
Achillina di Enrico Bo was born in Rome in 1914,
at a time when the futurists were creating a stir. She grew
up near the Caste! Sant'Angelo and the Vatican, where
she was baptised. Her father taught her how to draw,
but at some stage she began to stray from the expected
path of a talented bourgeois girl of the time. Instead of
studying the fine arts, she enrolled in the male-dominated
architecture course at the University of Rome.
If architects born at the turn of the century, such
as Lucio Costa, experienced a kind of 'conversion' to
modernism after breaking with academicism, the situation
7
for those born a little later was quite different. By the

time Lina had graduated and was taking her first steps
in the professional world of architecture, various strands
of modernism had already become established in Italy,
although the tensions between them obscured their shared
ideological roots.
The beginnings of modern architecture in Italy are
entangled with the beginnings of fascism. Many architects,
while more naturally sympathetic to the architectural and
social/achievements of fledgling Soviet socialism, fell in
behind the promise of modernisation that the Mussolini
regime seemed to represent. In Rome, Marcello Piacentini
shared some of his major commissions with the Milanese
architect Gib Ponti, perhaps best described today as
proto-modern, and with modernists such as Giuseppe
Pagano. Along with Massimi Bontempelli, P M Bardi
launched Quadrante, a periodical that promoted rationalism
as the official architectural style of fascism. While Rome
was being refashioned as a millenary setting for the
celebration of the regime and its invented traditions- such
as Garibaldi Year, in 1932 - modernists and traditionalists
vied for the leading role in translating fascism into spaces
and images. Meanwhile, architects such as Carlo Enrico
Rava were working on another urban and political front,
building cities in Italy's new overseas colonies. The
culmination of this was the construction, in 1935, of the
Esposizione Universale di Roma (eur), a model colonial
city built on the west side of Rome. Based on a masterplan
by Piacentini, eur was intended to be the site of the 1942
World's Fair - which of course never happened.
In this ideological swamp -epitomised by Giuseppe
Terragni, the architect of the Casa del Fascio in Como, who
was killed after enlisting in Mussolini's army - there were
two main paths open to an aspiring architect: one was the
University of Rome, the other the Polytechnic in Milan; the
former was directed by Marcello Piacentini and Gustavo
Giovanonni,4 while the latter was driven by young people
seeking change. Our young architetto took both routes: she
graduated in Rome, and began her career in Milan. She left
8
INTRODUCTION
the capital of the recently unified nation and moved to the

capital of Lombardy, a city that was more open, politically
and culturally. Here, she was able to escape the Roman
establishment and find her own direction in life. She
worked first for Stile magazine under Gib Ponti - another
collaborator was her future husband P M Bardi. She
illustrated covers and whole pages, either alone or in
conjunction with others, using the compound name
Gienlica: Gib Ponti, Enrico Bo, Lina Bo and Carlo Pagani.
She then went on to edit Domus and Quaderni di Domus
before moving to Brazil with Bardi.
In Rio de Janeiro, Lina had her first opportunity to
design and build, but this did not mean that she stopped
writing. On the contrary, in a place where architectural
choices were guided by ideology - where different groups
vied to be the official representatives of the Vargas regime
(which came to an end shortly before the couple's arrival),
where Le Corbusier and Marcello Piacentini battled for
government commissions - in this territory, at once familiar
and strange, Lina never stopped practising architecture
through writing and editing.
In this immediate postwar period some cracks were
beginning to show in the smooth progress of Brazilian
modern architecture. In 1948 an article by Geraldo Ferraz
in Anteprojeto cast doubt on the primacy of the Rio school,
even in its most canonical form - the work of Lucio Costa.
Our intention here is not to revisit this debate, but merely
to draw attention to the fact that anyone writing at this time
was entering contentious territory: the battle lines had been
drawn and you had to make it clear which side you were
on. The same applied to Habitat, the journal of the Sao Paulo
Museum of Art, which was launched in 1950, and co-edited
by the Bardis for the first 15 issues.
Habitat provided Lina with her first platform in
Brazil. While it was essentially a museum publication, it
dedicated a fair amount of column space to related subj ects.
However, other early writings appeared in publications
that targeted a wider readership: Lo Stile, Vetrina e Negozio
and Bellezza, as well as Domus and Qu.aderni di Domu.s.
9
There w as also A, later renamed A- Cultura del/a V ita, a

magazine Li na launched with Bruno Zevi and Carlo Pagani
shortly before leaving for BraziL In the letter she wrote to
Zevi proposing the new venture, she spoke of there bei ng
a gap in the market for a magazine that was 'accessible to all
and which could address the usual mistakes of the Italians'.5
Unfortunately, in light of the difficulties of att ributing
authorship- the writing was approached as a group project
- w e could not include any of t he articles from this unique
magazine in the present collection.6 A interpreted the
'culture of life' in its broadest sense, exploring such diverse
themes as family planning and household mechanisation,
and becom ing, under Zevi's direction, a pol i tic ised
periodical for postwar Jtaly. The launch issue, like Alpha
itself, signalled a new beginning: 'To start from the
beginning, from the letter A, and plan for a happier life
for all', was how Zevi put it in the first editorial. A stood
for abode, anxiet y, amour, ability, agreement, audacity,
advice, asperity, absurdity, association. But it also signified
the atom bomb, b ring i ng to mind the kind of new
beginning nece ssa ry after the earth had been laid to waste.
A wa s also for accusation, a theme to which Lina would
return in Bahia.
lf A had a brief li fe s pan- five months- from the
-
very beginning Habitat w as part of the tripartite structure

that brought MASP to life, along with its enviable painting
collection and the lAC (Con temporar y Art Institute).
Typically for her gene ratio n and profession, Una Bo
Bardi did not observe standard academic protocols when
citing other authors. This makes reading her wor k a
somewhat sinuous exercise. There are occasional errors,
as fo rexample when she wrongly credits architecture with
certain theoretical discoveries. But on the other hand, a
careful reading between the lines reveals the presence of
important authors and philosophers, show ing the process
of their incorporation into the wider archi tectural deb ate .
Lina's first a rt ic les represent a theme that would

continually grow and evolve in her work: the house, living
well, the modem Westyle. In partnership with Carlo Pagani,
10
INTRODUCTION
Lina taught the lay reader how to arrange and furnish

their home, in short, how to decorate it- a word modern
architects disparaged. Living well was a theme that was
revived with elan after the war, but in the short articles she
wrote for Grazia and Stile her aim was to provide practical
tips on everyday issues: on painting ceilings, on upholstery,
on simple arrangements for the smaller house or a house
in the countryside, or the use of antiques in a contemporary
setting. For Lina, the modern house had also to be efficient,
mechanised, adapted to domestic life, ie, to the housewife's
daily routine. She was not alone in this belief: the principles
of Taylorism, which had originated in the United States,
had been widely adopted by German modernists in the
prewar period.
The texts that Lina wrote while still in Italy highlight
various examples of North American domestic architecture.
There are a few possible explanations for this affinity. One
is her fertile dialogue with Bruno Zevi, who had returned
from the United States in 1945; another is the creative
possibilities offered by the new world, in contrast to the
exhaustion of postwar Europe. Lina was not the first
architect to emigrate to the new world. She was part of a
movement that included the Bauhaus group in the United
States, as well as Hannes Meyer, who left Germ<my first for
the Soviet Union and thenfor Mexico. And she had company
in Brazil: Franz Heep, Lucjan Korngold, Giancarlo Palanti,
Bernard Rudofsky, Jacques Pillon and many others, most
of them based in Sao Paulo. Unlike the then capital, Rio de
Janeiro, the city was a stage for foreign architecture, removed
from the attempts to define a national character - in short,
it was pure business, all market. Urban space was quietly
being consolidated, from Avenida Paulista to the middle
class neighbourhoods in the throes of verticalisation -a
phenomenon that could be felt more in the streets than in
articles or manifestos. This was the context in which MASP
(Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo) was created.
In generational terms, Lina could have been a member
of Team 10. Her brutalism brings her close to the Smith sons;
her embracing of 'folk culture' earned her an ally in Aldo
11
van Eyck. This generational affinity makes her an indirect

apprentice of the founders of the modern movement - a
proponent of a modern, postwar architecture that refused
to succumb to the formulaic or the routine. And she
continued to declare herself a modernist even after the
next generation came along and many of her compatriots
converted to postmodernism, a term and practice that
she condemned without even taking the trouble to translate
-it was the death of architecture.
Many of the texts in this collection reveal Una's clear
admiration for the Brazilian modern architecture that came
out of Lucio Costa's break with the National School of
the Fine Arts. After her arrival in Sao Paulo, however, and
particularly as editor of Habitat, Lina assumed the role of
a privileged interpreter, a critical guide to the architecture
she saw flourishing in the cities around her. Her pen
wounded Sao Paulo pride by attacking the Se Cathedral
and Martinelli Building, while simultaneously calling for
opposition to the hegemony of the so-called Rio school.
Her position was often ambiguous, as she would speak to
Brazilians as a foreigner but respond as a native to friends
abroad, such as Bruno Zevi or Max Bill.
With the founding father of Brazilian modern
architecture, Lucio Costa, Lina engaged in a dialogue
that hinged upon a point of honour: the relationship with
the past. For Costa, the key to Brazilian modernism lay
partly in colonial architecture, while for Lina the essential
root was in vernacular construction, in the wattle-and-daub
hut of the rubber-tapper - a radical shift of architectural
perspective, even though Costa had conceded that it was
'the people', rather than architects, who were primarily
responsible for transmitting the 'good tradition' brought
into the country by its colonisers. 7 This colonial legacy
was safeguarded by IPHAN, Brazil's heritage trust, an
institution in which Costa played a crucial role. What the
trust sought to preserve - or rather reconstruct through
the restorations it carried out and the protection it extended
-was a national past. For Lina, by contrast, 'the people'
assumed a romantic and revolutionary aspect, leading to
12
INTRODUCTION
a politicisation of her discourse during a period in which

so much was riding on the modernisation of the nation.
The n o tion of authent icity was shifting: now it was the
people who were authentic: the man in his wattle-and-daub
hut was a contempo1·ary social subject, a grassroots presence
very much alive in the .re cently re-democratised Brazil.
Lina was certainly not bossa nova, her dissonance was
something else entirely.
Politics was also an important part of Lina's work and
thinking, just as it was for Le Corbusier, who once wrote
'architecture or revolution', or for the Bauhaus architects
who left Nazi Ger m an y - or for the many Italian architects
who joined the tide of fascism. While her po lit icis at io n was
initially the result of her closeness to Assis Chateaubriand
and the circles of power, it found its primary expression
i n the relation ship between the architect and her c lie nts -
a formative tension that pervaded her career, from the
stratagems sh e devised with Adhemar de Barros for the
construction of MASP, to her admiration for, and ultimate
break with the Governor of Bahia, Juracy Maga!haes, or h er
later association with Sergio Fe rr o and his circle. Her fin al
political involvement came at the end of her career, when
she undertook the conversion of what she considered to be
a detestable building by Ramos de Azevedo into municipal
headquarters for the Workers' Party Mayor of Sao Paulo,
Luiza Eru nd ina.
For the Bardis, the articles published in Habitat were
also a means of assimilation into Brazil and Brazilian life.
For the very first issue, Una wrote the text 'Beautiful Child'
as a response to European critics who had begun to be
disenc hant ed with Brazilian architecture, warning that it
was falling under the shadow of formalism. Lina countered
that Brazilian architecture was like a child that had been
born beautiful without anyone knowing why - a child that
had not yet had time t o stop and reflect, but whose greatest
quality was its apparent roughness and lack of polish. Lina
thought that her older European friends were mistaken,
and wrote from the position of someone who was part of
modern Brazilian architecture.
13
Also in Habitat, the design and construction of the

couple's new home, known as the Glass House, provoked
a wide range of reflections, from a request for special care
to be taken with the new neighbourhood of Morumbi, to
an affirmation of the quality of this controversial residence,
where the primary consideration was not for the client but
for the autonomy of the craft of architecture - after all, as
Lina wrote in Habitat 10, the client was the architect herself.
Regarding the development of Una's work, how can
we explain the shifts that occurred in her projects, from
'houses of air' to 'houses of earth',8 from Miesian precision
to a dialogue with the vernacular? The texts in this
collection contain some dues, if we draw Lina out of the
chrysalis of her singularity and relate her reflections to
the dilemmas of postwar architecture. Her championing
of glass and the houses of Vilanova Artigas predates the
Dubrovnik ClAM. In her later projects, the ribbon window
(one of Corb's five principles) became a hole, a cavern, an
uncanny form in relation to the wall-to-wall glazing of her
Glass House. Screened from the sun, these projects became
what I<.enneth Frampton might label 'critical regionalism'.
All the same, up to the very end, her projects oscillated
between the glass box and the cave, the latter a clear attempt
to inject meaning into an architecture that was often seen
to lack meaning.
The recent upsurge of interest in Una's work - as
demonstrated by the number of recent articles and books
- has to some extent eclipsed the role played by Pietro
Maria Bardi. If we have chosen to omit from this collection
certain texts that are commonly attributed to Lina, it is
because it is difficult to corroborate such an attribution,
given how closely interwoven her ideas were with those
of her husband. The provocative column 'Aiencastro', which
brought Habitat to its sarcastic close, was in fact a joint
effort. The two shared an interest in popular art -P M Bardi
corresponded with the Brazilian folk artists Renato Almeida
and Edson Carneiro- and the social role of architecture
and urbanism. In short, there was more dialogue between
Lina and Bardi than might at first appear.
14
INTRODUCTION
Lina lived in Bahia between 1958 and 1964- a period

she would later call her years 'among the whites'. Dating
from the beginning of this time, her inaugural lecture
at the Faculty of Fine Arts, 'Theory and Philosophy of
Architecture', reveals an architect who was a careful reader
of Antonio Gramsci. This knowledge of Gramsci's work
would later echo in her own writings on popular art and
on the distinction between the national and the nationalist.
The slides she showed of pre-war Italian public housing
during this lecture were accompanied (according to her
notes) by the opening pages of Gramsci's Il materialismo
storico e la filosofia di Benedetto Croce. According to the
Brazilian translator of this book, Carlos Nelson Coutinho,
Una was the first person in the country to talk about
Gramsci. Aside from Gramsci, her notion of the 'historical
present' has another origin: Benedetto Croce's view that
historical judgement is determined by the contemporary
situation, by a subject that observes the present as a
platform from which to assess the past.
Gramsci and Croce- both of whom, despite their
many differences, confronted fascism in their own ways
could hardly have imagined that their legacies would
end up being translated into colours, shapes and volumes.
Gramsci's influence can be seen in Lina's centre for folk art
in Salvador, a colonial house restored in a manner that was
unusual by the standards of the day. The hand of Cro.ce is
apparent in her restoration work in historic centres (Salvador)
and buildings (eg, Palacio das lndustrias), which was
always conceived in relation to the present- and not just
a pragmatic or programmatic present, but a critical present,
which enabled her to question the emphasis placed on
tourism in Italian cities, for example.
Lina Bo Bardi died in March 1992. A few months before
her death she gave a lecture at a symposium honouring
Ludo Costa. At the height of her fame and maturity,
she reaffirmed her appreciation for the country she had
adopted as her own- a country that was free, with no
intellectual tradition, and just a tad crazy- and, once again,
she emphasised the sense of possibility within modernism.
15
She praised Brasilia as the city that elevated Brazil above

the level of an insignificant Latin American republic,
and invited the audience, mostly of young architecture
students, to join the debate, 'because I am not a speaker',
she said, 'I'm an architect'.
The word she used was arquiteta, Portuguese and
feminine, in contrast to architetto, the non-gender-specific
Italian designation she had always used before. So to be
an arquiteta was all of this: everything she had said,
written; designed, drawn, imagined and achieved. And
on all levels, from a chair for her Glass House to a toboggan
for Sao Paulo, her aim was the full realisation of the
precepts of the European avant-garde, only in the tropics
and, ultimately, in the feminine.
NOTES 5. 'Una Bo 8ardl: un archltetto in

I. He.lnrlc h WOlfflin. PrincipLes tragltto ansioso', C arm e(o 4, 1992.
of Art History(l915). 6. Zeuler Lima. Verso un'architettura
2. 'The principal aim IS a manifesto' was sempltce (Rome: Fondazione
le Corbusier's reply to accusations 8runo Zevl, 2007). 12.
that his P lan Voisin would unleash .

7. See Lucio Co st a Reg lst ro de
-
large scal e destruction. See Richard una viVe ncia (Sao Paulo: Em presa
Sen nett. The Conscience of the Eye. das Artes. 1995), 461-62.
The Design and SocialLi fe of Cities 8. The terms are Marla de F'tima
(Lo nd on and New York: Campelto's Master's dissertation,
WW Norton, 1990). 72. 'Lina Bo Bardl: as moradas da alma'
3. Maga li Sarfatti-larson. Behind t h e (EESC-USP, 1997).
Postmodern Fa((ade: Architectural
Change in Late Twentieth
Century America(8erkeley and

Los Angeles: Univers it y of California
Press. 1993). 11.
-4. On Place ntini, see Marcos Tognon,
Arqultetura itatlana no Brazil:

a obra de MarceUo Piacentlni
(Campinas: Editora da Unicamp.

1998): on Gio vanonni, see Beatri�
M Kvhl, A rqui te tur a de ferro e
arquitetura ferroviSrla no Brazit

(Silo Paulo: Atelie Editorial. 1998).
16
MIRANTE DAS ARTES, &tc.
N-1, JaneirofiFevereiro 1967, Cr$1.000

10 HABITAT
ARCHITECTURE AND NATURE:
THE HOUSE IN THE LANDSCAPE (1943)
A focus on styles, decorative structures and academic

formalism froze nineteenth-century architecture into
fixed forms, into a dysfunctional, superficial aestheticism
that bore no relation to the essential conditions of
construction or the necessities of life or the environment.
By contrast, the legacy of modernism destroyed all this
superficiality, all these preconceptions, all ornamentalism,
and instilled in architecture the equation CLIMATE,
ENVIRONMENT, SOIL, LIFE -an equation that has
flourished, with wonderful primitivism, in the most
spontaneous of architectural forms: rural architecture.
The world is full of examples of the perfect correspondence
between this architecture and the environment in which
human lives unfold, but none is so succinct as the
Mediterranean house, none so pure and perfectly integrated
into the earth and the landscape, so consonant with the
life going on within and around it.
Modern architecture introduced the necessary
equation of TECHNIQUE, AESTHETIC and FUNCTION
into that complex organism we call the house, establishing
a close connection between it and the land and human
llfe and labour surrounding it. Mountains, woodland, sea,
rivers, rocks, meadows and fields are all factors defining
the form of a house: exposure to the sun, weather
and winds determine its position, the surrounding land
provides the materials for its construction, and thus
the house grows out of the land whilst remaining deeply
rooted in it, its proportions governed by a constant: the
human scale. Therein flows human life, uninterruptedly,
and with profound harmony.
21
The primordial instinct for protection that gave rise

to the first shelters - conical huts of sticks and straw or
cubes of heavy stone blocks - has undergone a profound
evolution and is today found anew in the architecture
of houses that, while adapted to modern architecture's
most rigorous precepts of functionality and essentiality,
nevertheless preserve the 'purity' of the spontaneous
and primitive forms from which they derive. What they
also conserve, in the irregular stone and in the carved
wood: is that 'pure' and 'natural' feeling that keeps them
rooted to the earth, joined with nature, immersed within
the landscape. We are not referring here to external
appearances or to vernacular traditions, but to those
qualities- defined by modern architecture's rejection of
the 'false', the 'stylised', the 'crystallised' -that have restored
to the house the character of pure, unstylised functional
construction: a substantial advance on the age-old concept
of primitive and rural architectures.
Each one of the houses presented below maintains
a deep connection with the landscape and the life of
the surroundings; some of them are 'anti-architectural',
refusing to correspond even in rough outline to the norms
of the traditional house, but staying true to the landscape,
following its contours, emulating the sweep of rocks or
outcrops of vegetation in its walls, achieving a harmonious
fusion rather than the total 'separation' between house
and nature that traditional architecture brings about.
HOUSE NEAR ABIQUIU, NEW MEXICO
A colonial-style house built using local and Native American

labour supervised by a local construction foreman. Both the
plan and the construction material are of special interest.
The walls, set on foundations of solid rock and cement,
are of square adobe blocks made from earth excavated from
a nearby site; the blocks were finished, externally and
internally, with plaster and then whitewashed in subtle
shades using the local tierra blanca or white soil. The outer
22
ARCHITECTURE AND NATURE
walls are a delicate pink, similar enough in tone to the

surrounding rockface for the house to melt into the
background. Pine trunks brought from a higher altitude,
,
were used as roof beams and as columns for the terrace

around the patio, while the roof is of planks of Oregon
pine The entire structure is robust . The fireplaces provide
.
enough heat for the whole house. Despite the extreme

simplicity of the construction, the house offers all the
comforts modern technology can afford.
CABIN IN THE PARK
A cabin built in parkl and. Con trolling access to the park,

it also serves as a lookout point, with sweeping views to
the south and the east. Its siting allows it to take advantage
of the fresh southern breezes in su mmer while providing
some insulation agai nst the noise of the street traffic and
the freezin g winds in winter. .
The architect opted fo r a rustic feel, and adapted it well
to the natural setting The cabin walls are of rough stone
.
blocks while the roof is covered in ordinary tiles and

sports a stocky stone chimney. Construction is deliberately
minimised: the exposed beams give the interior a r ough
and ready feel. Alongside the cabin, two stone markers

-
made from the same material as the walls mark the

-
entra nce to the park. A row of trees planted a long the north
face acts as a windbreak in winter.
HOUSE IN THE CATALINA HILLS
This solitary house marries Mexican colonial architecture

with the natural characteristics of its desolate su rroundings,
bristling with cactus. Unglazed clay b ricks are the
basic bui lding material, though the porch roof is covered
in Span ish tiles. Despite the rustic look of t he exterior,
the interior was planned and built to meet the most
sophisticated requirements of modern living . A longside
23
an irregularly shaped patio is the sitting room, which leads

to the bedrooms on one side, and to the dining room and
service areas on the other. The main entrance is through
the patio, at one end of the sitting room.
HOUSE IN SANTA FE
Here the architect observed local tradition by creating

a semi-patio. This adobe house is extremely simple on the
outside, while the interior, with its exposed pine beams,
is richly decorated in the style of the old Spanish houses.
The plan is informed by its circulation, and yet is
unimpeded by staircases, while the only stepped level
change is from the kitchen to the garage.
HOUSE IN THE MOUNTAINS
Located in a magnificent mountain landscape, this simple

south-facing single-storey house is designed to maximise
views, comfort and flexibility. All the rooms, except for
the kitchen and bathroom, are located on the side with the
views, with direct access to the terrace that runs along the
entire front of the house. A straight corridor divides the
interior into two distinct parts, one for daytime occupation,
the other for night. The daytime spaces can be enlarged by
opening up the sliding doors of the study, which doubles
as a spare bedroom. A drive-through garage rules out the
need for tricky hilltop manoeuvres. Juxtaposing north
facing windows allow light to stream down the hallway
into the bedrooms, bathroom, hallway and sitting room.
HOUSE ON THE HILL I
A streamlined solution devised for a tight space, with the

entrance and dining/living rooms on the upper floor, and
the bedrooms down below. While responding to the steeply
24
ARCHITECTURE AND NATURE
sloped terrain, this solution offers a further advantage:

it allows a veranda to be added to the living room -which
enjoys exceptional panoramic views - without impeding
in any way the connection between the interior and the
grounds, which are accessible from the dining room terrace
at the rear. The exterior is a good example of a successful
use of timber and an imaginative solution to an awkward
foundation problem.
HOUSE IN LA CANADA, CALIFORNIA
This house displays an interesting complexity. The living

and dining rooms were designed to take in the view from
three perspectives, and so form an angle in relation to the
main volume, while the service area occupies a separate
wing. The angle of the wall that divides the silting room
from the library proved ideal for twinned fi replaces .
HOUSE IN PASADENA
This house adapts in a fitting way to the site chosen for

its construction. In single-storey houses in California,
bedrooms are often accessed from the outside, while the
liv ing room is accessible from both interior and exterior.
ln this type of house, heating is not really an issue. The
exterior design is in perfect harmony with the project as
a whole. The choice of materials was carefully co nsidered.
The timber siding was given a single co at of linseed oil.
The underside of the gutters is painted oHve green.
GARDEN HOUSE
This is an exa mple of free composition in a modern house:

observe the combination of corner windows and slanting
tiled roof, of smooth and other more intricately worked
su rfaces The house was designed to function as both a
.
25
home and an office. The most interesting part of the project

is the interrupted common wall. The four corners of the
upper floor are occupied by four symmetrically arranged
bedrooms. The sloping terrain allows for a semi-basement
containing service spaces and a recreation room.
HOUSE ON THE HILL 11
The design is exceptionally clear and attractive, adapted

to the chosen site to great effect. Though dwarfed by
the surrounding trees, the house is a Jot more spacious
than it appears, with a sprawling ground floor only partly
covered by the bedrooms on the upper floor. Of particular
interest is the way the house occupies the terrain, with
a curved garden wall helping to set up a close connection
between the building and the grounds. The plan, generous
in its scope, offers a number of advantages, the most
significant of which is that it provides many of the rooms
with three different ways of relating to the exterior - of the
remainder, most have perfect ventilation. In addition, the
wings are positioned in such a way as to isolate the office
and guest quarters.
COUNTRY HOUSE
In this house the living rooms and service areas are placed
on the same floor, above the entrance, with storage and
a games area on the lower floor, which consists of a single
room; a terrace wraps around both floors. The architecture
is in keeping with the local heritage -this being a place
where Frank Lloyd Wright once built. The combination
of timber and stone both inside and out is quite typical,
as is the woodenlattice that supports the porch roof.
First published in Domus 191 (November 1943)
26
THE DESIGN OF INTERIORS 0944)
The guiding spirit of the old world was the Academy - a

spirit that excluded artists from industry and manufacture,
isolated them from the community and enveloped them
in a fiction (art for art's sake) removed from the real world.
The lack of a vital connection with the community
inevitably led art into sterile speculation: the form expressed
by drawing was confined to the pictorial plane, bearing
no relation to reality, material techniques or the economy.
Yet the second half of the nineteenth century saw the first
stirring s of protest against the deadening influence of
academia, and this would lay the foundations for a union
between creative artists and the industrial world. Demand
grew tor products that were both aesthetically pleasing and
economically and technically viable. By itself, technology
could not satisfy this demand. In the same way, 'artistic'
designs also fell short of the mark, failing to take into
account the practical requirements of the real world or the
technical processes of production .
Traditional methods of design are gone forever: today,

the continuing advance of technology is bringing about
a rapid transformation in the way we live, putting an end
to traditional forms.
Now that this connection to tradition has been lost,
we need to find a new way of marrying form and lifestyle .
This new relation will have to be expressed in the first

instance in the primary setting for human life: the house .
How can we achieve a coherent fusion of form and life in

our interiors?
The character and finishes of our living spaces have
undergone a gradual change in response to the continu
ously evolving demands associated with the new ways
27
of living. As a result, our furniture and decoration have

acquired a completely new appearance. Among the most
important factors contributing to this are: cross-ventilation,
insulation, orientation and the positioning of windows
in relation to the landscape.
The development of self-supporting structures, doing
away with the need for load-bearing walls, has introduced
flexibility into the interior. The logic of construction provides
for maximum freedom in laying out the internal spaces
allowing them to be more open and readily adaptable,
with any partitions made of insulating materials. Furniture
is flexible, while there is a certain solidity to the permanent
insulations such as bathrooms, toilets, kitchens, laundry
rooms and services in general. Brick walls and permanent
partitions are not always required to define an architectural
environment: in many instances a room can be divided
using furniture of an appropriate size. Eliminating all
non-essential partitions is a useful way of maximising the
available space and offsetting high construction costs.
An efficient use of space is desirable in any type
of dwelling, from luxury apartments to social housing.
One obvious way to maximise space is to avoid small alcoves
and an excess of doorways, and to use sliding partitions or
curtains to subdivide a space wherever possible. Space can
also be freed up with built-in wardrobes and appliances
in service areas.
Freeing the external walls from the load-bearing
structure makes it possible to have large ribbon windows
or wall-to-ceiling glazing, increasing daylight levels,
eliminating dark corners and increasing the flexibility
of the arrangement of the room. The layout of the interiors,
stripped of superfluous accessories and accommodating
the furniture in an informal, harmonious arrangement,
guarantees maximum comfort with the minimum means.
Since the purpose of the house is to provide a frame
work of convenience and comfort, it would be a mistake to
place too much emphasis on its merely decorative aspects.
What is more important is clarity in the design of the
various parts, along with a rigorous attention to the choice
28
THE DESIGN OF INTERIORS
of materials. Three types of furniture may be considered:

1. commercially available furniture 2. standardised or
,
mass-produced items, 3· custom-designed furniture.

While standardising furniture is desirable, we should
still be aiming for a reasonable variety. We can learn a
lesson in this respect from the Japanese, who achieve variety
while using standard-size tatami mats as the basis for
determining the form and arrangement of the furnishings.
The beautiful workmanship that flourished in the
past has now given way to mechanisation. Imitative artistic
design demonstrably increases production costs, but on the
other hand machines can be used to create new aesthetic
qualities. Architects and designers worldwide have focused
on the machine's potential in relation to aesthetics and
economy. Both objectives - cost-effectiveness and appearance
- require a simplicity of form and good finishing. This has
opened up new, artistic means of expression in industry
that the architect can turn to his advantage.
With this I'm referring to a new wealth of materials
- plastics, chrome, steel alloys, glass, textiles. Interior
design can benefit from these new materials and
technologies if they are chosen with rigour.
An appropriate use of materials and colour effects
can play a vital role in subdividing contiguous spaces.
The choice of flooring is particularly important in defining
an atmosphere and aesthetic effect. As an alternative to
a featureless floor partly covered with traditional rugs, we
can now have rubber, cork-rubber, linoleum, wood laminate,
stone composites, dyed concrete, etc - all products that
have come onto the market in recent years. The choice
of surface will depend on the ambience you wish to create,
the general layout of the interior, the furniture, the intensity
of the colour and the level of simplicity or refinement you
require. Walls and ceilings enclosing one or more rooms
can also be soundproofed using acoustic plaster or other
types of insulation. An attention to the finishing of ceilings
and walls-whether using plaster the usual drapery or
,
newly developed industrial materials -should be accompa

nied by a careful study of artificial lighting, obtained by
29
both direct and indirect means. While doors and casings

are no longer 'features' to be stuccoed or otherwise
ornamented, they can be made more interesting through
the application of colour, consistent with the general
scheme for the interior.
Windows are also very important in creating an
atmosphere especially when they're large enough to bring
,
the outside world and nature directly into the interior.

Horizontal windows are more suited to a panoramic view.
Where there are terraces sliding doors or French windows
,
should separate exterior from interior - curtains or

blinds can be used to regulate sunlight. These a re the basic
starting points for a modern approach to the design and
furnishing of the interior.
First published in Domus 198 (June 1944)
30
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STONES AGAINST DIAMONDS (1947)
Ever since I was a child I've collected things: pebbles, shells

from the rocks in the Abruzzi, strands of wire, little screws.
While I was still very young I remember something
momentous happened in the form of a chicken my mother
was preparing for our Sunday roast. In its stomach was
a collection of glass and pebbles worn smooth by water, in
shades of green, pink, black, brown and white. My mother
gave them to me, and that was the start of my collection,
which I kept in a little powder compact, a present from my
Aunt Esterina, made from the blue steel of German guns
abandoned after France's victory in the First World War.
I was six years old. Aunt Esterina had gone to Naples to sit
for a school exam, and when she came back she told me that
all the trees in Naples were made of pink coraL From that
moment on, pink coral became a part of my life.
My passion for stones continued to grow. By the age of
15 my new love was a window display on the Via Condotti,
which was always full of antique jewels. At least once a
week, on the way home from my school on Via Ripetta,
I'd stop and gaze at the display. One day the owner invited
me in, and so began my friendship with Signor Rapi, who
let me handle the stones. My absolute favourite was a little
blue cameo, dazzling as the dawn, with a little clog's head
on it. Signor Rapi said it was English, dating from the start
of the last century, and that the stone was called labradorite.
So blue labradorite was now added to the pantheon along
side pink coraL These were 'semi-precious' stones - gold,
pearls and diamonds never interested me at alL
The years wentby, bringing the outbreak of the Second
World War, my training as an architect, a fast-moving career
- I was editing Domus by the age of 25. Then P M Bardi
35
appeared on the horizon. An interview for Domus came

with a lovely surprise - a necklace of dark coral cameos and
gold that I had admired platonically on the Ponte Vecchio
in Florence, in the window of Settepassi, goldsmiths to the
King ofItaly. Thus my love affair with 'stones' was rekindled.
The years passed.
In 1946 we were invited to come to Brazil. P M Bardi,
then my husband, gave me a collection of night-blue
aquamarines and other Brazilian stones.
My collection has grown. My love for Brazil has
fuelled my love of gems. This is a country of marvellous
stones, such as the quartz crystals that you can pick up
from the ground in the mountains of Minas Cerais, in the
tablelands, or even in Sao Paulo state, where, some years
ago, I found some really beautiful ones, perfectly polished
by nature, serving as gravel underlay for the tarmac being
laid on the road out of Itarare.
Well, all of this is a prelude to calling for designers
in Brazil to start working with these gemstones, which
are unjustly tagged 'semi-precious'. Consider it an ethical
demand for 'ornaments' made of base gold, bronze,
diamonds with visible inclusions, silver, chrysolite, quartz
and coloured beryl. Ornament has been a constant in
human history, since ancient times -now in Brazil we may
perhaps see the industrial design of 'high-end' jewellery
distinct from the diamonds and gold of high-society ladies.
I could go on to the 'trinkets' sold by market traders
and street peddlers. But that would be a whole other story.
First published in Marcelo Carvalho Ferraz (ed),

Una Bo Bardi (Sao Paulo: Instituto Lina Bo Bardi, 1993)
36
BEAUTIFUL CHILD (1951)
We have published a photograph of the Education Ministry

in Rio de Janeiro as a call to arms to continue the fight
against the formulaic and routine Make no mistake:
.
formulaic does not just apply to historicism, it also extends

(even more dangerously) to the so-called 'modern' -
modernism as a 'habit', as in 'the old way doesn't work
any more, so let s move ahead with the times, young men,
'
or we'll lose out'. We have to fight against this kind of

dangerous generalisation which has nothing whatsoever
to do with exterior forms and formalist acrobatics.
The new Brazilian architecture has many flaws: it is
young, it hasn't had much time to stop and reflect, but
came into being all of a sudden, as a beautiful child. We can
agree that brise-soleil and tilework are 'intentional elements',
that some of Oscar [Niemeyer]'s free forms are sculptural
complacencies, that the construction is not always up to
scratch, and that in certain instances details are resolved
in a way that is inconsistent with the whole (on this I must
agree with my European friends). We cannot accept,
however, that Brazilian architecture is already on its way
towards academicism, as various foreign reviews would
have it (such as Bruno Zevi's important book, for example1),
and nor will it be, for as long as its spirit is the human spirit
and its goal the improvement of living conditions - for
as long as it draws its inspiration from the intimate poetry
of the Brazilian land. These are the values that define
contemporary Brazilian architecture. Its source is not the
architecture of the Jesuits: it comes from the wattle-and
daub shelter of the solitary man, laboriously constructed
out of the materials of the forest, it comes from the house
of the rubber-tapper, with its wooden floor and thatch roof.
37
It alludes to, even resonates with, this fierce resolve to

make, in which there is a pride and a poetry - the pride
and poetry of the backlander who has never known the
great cities or the monuments of civilisation, who cannot
refer to a tradition that stretches back thousands of years,
but whose achievements - things made possible only
because of his singular pride - cause men from ancient
civilisations to stop and stare.
For a direction to follow, Brazil looked to the work
of Le Qorbusier (who visited Brazil, as did Wright), as it
seemed to correspond most closely to the aspirations of a
Latin people - a poetic work, unrestrained by puritanical
assumptions or prejudices. This lack of polish, this
crudeness, this carefree appropriation is the driving force
behind contemporary Brazilian architecture - it requires
a continual mixing of technological know-how with the
spontaneity and passion of primitive art. Which is why
we do not agree with our European friends' view that
Brazilian architecture is on the path towards academicism.
This is an attempt to respond to Abelardo's assertion
that 'we still do not know for sure the reasons why we
have made such progress in our architecture'.2 Brazilian
architecture was born a beautiful child: we may not know
why, but we must nevertheless go on raising it, caring for
it, nurturing it, following its development. We have
witnessed the miracle of its birth, but now its direction
the continuation of its life, the unfolding of a coherent
purpose - will depend on our strength of will, on our
readiness to take up the struggle, on our resolve. This is
what needs reaffirming.
First published in Habitat 2 (January-March 1951)
NOTES de Souza (1908-1981]. whooe
r. Sruno Zevi, Stor;a detl'architettura article 'NoS$a arquitetura'
moderna (Turin: Einaudi, 1950). (Our Architecture) appeared
2. The Rio·based architect Abelardo in the same publication.
38
TWO BUILDINGS BY OSCAR NIEMEYER
(1950
From the outset, reinforced concrete has been used to

constructtraditional structures: ie, vertical elements and
horizontal beams that form load-bearing 'cages' allowing
for independent facades and all the typical expressions of
rationalism - that play of prismatic volumes which Frank
Lloyd Wright derided as 'box architecture'. The term is a
polemical exaggeration, but it does highlight how the first
rationalist architects failed to grasp the sculptural potential
of reinforced concrete, which takes advantage of the forces
of tension and compression of the composite material.
The possibi lities of the new architecture of this later
period - which we might call post-rationalism - reside
precisely in the sculptural potential of reinforced concrete.
In a series of lectures given in London in 1939, Weight
described a future where form would be 'unfolded' - that
is, sculptural - typically machine-made but now related
to the human, the expression of a contemporary civilisation
that was at last in harmony with man, after all the strife
that had accompanied the dawn of the machine age.
'Unfolded' form and the sculptural possibilities
of reinforced concrete were also the themes of a series of
lectures at the MASP by Pier Luigi Nervi,! the great Italian
structural engineer and inventor (particularly in the
field of 'prefabrication'). Nervi described the development
of reinforced-concrete forms and resistant 'wrinkled'
surfaces. The first manifestations of these forms can be seen
in industrial production, in car bodywork and in certain
household appliances such as irons, blenders and ventilators.
These forms were foreshadowed by Erich Mendelsohn,
in his still-romantic Einstein observatory in Potsdam.
39
Oscar Niemeyer has an instinctive feel for the

sculptural qualities of these new forms. His work is moving
ever further away from the 'box frame' in his search for
a plasticity that is not baroque - because the baroque in
architecture is still a completely aesthetic expression of
craftsmanship, whereas modern architecture's pursuit
of free forms is concerned only with man. Underlying
the sculptural expression of these free forms is a desire to
perfect what we'll call 'unfolded' forms - the perfect forms
of maehine-made perfection.
Which brings us to the problem of arbitrariness:
a free form is arbitrary when judged in relation to defined
geometric forms, but it's not arbitrary in the context of
the infinite possibilities of freeforms. It's more pertinent
to decide whether or not the form represents the infinite
freedom of the artist's creative act; whether or not the form
attains the status of art.
Niemeyer's inclination towards this freedom,
prefigured in the Pampulha church and in his design for
a theatre next to the Education Ministry in Rio de Janeiro,
is now confirmed by his most recent construction: an
industrial complex. The verve and inventiveness of the
design compensate for some shortcomings, its indifference to
every traditional constraint points to a major achievement
in contemporary architecture: the affirmation of the
creative freedom of the artist.
NOTES
I. MASP - Museum deArte de
Sao Paulo Assis Chateaubriand.
40
WIN DOW DISPLAYS (1951)
Window displays are an immediate reflection, a quickfire

snapshot of a city's personality, and not just of its outward
traits, but its deepest character. As the 'medium' through
which products are sold, the window display is entirely
in thrall to money: it is the velvet glove whose indifferent,
decorative appearance conceals the knotty talons of
calculations of 'costs', 'margins' and 'profit' - columns of
cold sums. A true theory (interested parties would say
'science'), a specialist branch of psychology, a calculation of
possible probabilities masked behind an apparent 'tribute
to the passer-by', it is a little mouse-trap primed with bait to
entice the mouse-like consumer - 'fire sale!', 'final clearance!'
- all flagged with posters, slogans, arrows. Window
displays shout: 'We want to sell, sell, sell, because we want
your money, MONEY.' The garlands of flowers, the glazed
vases, the smiling mannequins, the velvet drapery- they
all scream that same word, giving away the modus operandi
of the window-dresser, the way the 'decoration' is focused
solely on luring the consumer-mouse. However, the city
is a public space, a great exhibition space, a museum, an
open book offering all kinds of subtle readings, and anyone
who has a shop, a window display or any showcase of this
kind has to assume a moral responsibility which requires
that tihey stop ignoring the fact that 'their' window display
might help to shape the taste of city-dwellers, help to shape
the face of the city and reveal something of its essence.
We took some random photographs of shop
windows showcasing fashions, sports goods, even religious
reliquaries (elements that used to be works of art in past
centuries still linger on, enfeebled and tragic, robbed of the
pure and coherent forms they once had). We photographed
41
blenders and electric coffee-makers nestled among bouquets

of paper flowers, seemingly put there in an attempt to
cancel out the gadgets' strictly utilitarian forms.
The multitudes of mannequins, the elegance reduced
to ruches and paper flags, speak of the tawdry tastes of
the bourgeoisie (petty or otherwise) and the nouveau riche.
They feed old vices and habits with a force that is made
near invincible by the window display's capacity to reach
a wide public with an immediacy unmatched by the slow
burnil'lg persuasiveness of articles, exhibitions and books.
A city's displays can undo years of efforts to correct
and guide public taste. We are focusing our attention here
on the middle classes and the newly rich (we might also
have added the select elite): the window displays you
find in working-class neighbourhoods are beyond reproach
because they reflect the unerring taste of the people,
untainted by intellectual posturing. Such displays, markets
and fairs grow out of spontaneous movements unsullied by
the snobbish routines of 'art' (in the current accepted
meaning of that term, applied since the end of the
nineteenth century) and help to create a pure atmosphere
-something the 'cultured' classes can only attain through
the strictest discipline and a rigorous selection process.
With clearly polemical intent, we are publishing
here the work of a window-dresser who sees the storefront
display as a public platform or exhibition gallery and
who, above all, does not resort to the bait of the 'mouse
trap' but displays the products solely in accordance with
their own sense of morality and collective responsibility.
The firm's director, in response to our enquiries,
confirmed that this type of select, rigorous promotion
achieved excellent results; the public was not put off, but
stopped, looked, entered the store and bought the goods,
recognising the 'cleansing', honest qualities of the display
-something that is not-a-firesale, not-a-total-liquidation,
not-a-mouse-trap.
First published in Habitat 2 (October-December 1951)

42
HOUSE IN MORUMBI (1953)
No decorative or compositiona! effect was sought in this

house, as the aim was to intensify its connection with
nature, using the simplest possible means, in order to have
the minimum impact on the landscape. The problem was
to create an environment that was 'physically' sheltered,
ie, that offered protection from the wind and the rain,
but at the same time remained open to everything that
is poetic and ethical, even the wildest of storms.
The intention was therefore to situate the house
within nature, bringing it into contact with its 'dangers'
without fussing too much about the usual 'protections';
hence the house has no parapet walls. Mannesmann steel
tubes support an ultra-light reinforced concrete platform
constructed using 'lost formwork', where the timber
shuttering is absorbed into the slab. Glass walls enclose
the house on three sides. Inwardly, the roof - a wafer-thin
concrete slab covered with Eternit and insulated with
fibreglass- is sloped to allow rainwater to drain via
the Mannesmann tubes. On the outer part of the roof,
rainwater runs off via a pair of horizontal gutters. Metal
sandwich panels, with fibreglass insulation, form the
continuation of the glazed wall on the side elevations.
The metal and the gutters are painted red. Access to the
house is via a cast iron staircase with natural granite steps.
An interna I area, a sort of suspended patio, allows for cross
ventilation on hot days. The rear of the house, which rests
directly upon the terrain, is a standard stone and cement
construction; a long courtyard, sealed on one side, separates
the front of the house from the service area to the rear,
though both volumes are connected via the kitchen.
Above the kitchen, waterproofed with aluminium panels,
43
is a low-maintenance, natural tropical garden. As the house

faces south-southeast, blinds and shutters are not required:
the latter are inadvisable during the rainy season anyway,
as mou Id proliferates in the absence of sunlight. Protection
from the morning sun is provided by white vinilite
curtains (plavinil).
This house represents an attempt to achieve a
communion between nature and the natural order of things.
By raising minimum defences against the natural elements,
it tries' to respect this natural order, with clarity, and never
as a hermetically sealed box that flees from the storms
and the rain, shies away from the world of men - the kind
of box which, on the rare occasions it approaches nature,
does so only in a decorative or compositional, and therefore
'external', sense.

-
(
"
THEORY AND PHILOSOPHY
OF ARCHITECTURE (1958)
Theory and Philosophy of Architecture is the name of this

class, and most of you (I can see it in your eyes) harbour
a certain distrust of these words.
Naturally, this class could also be called Professional
Practice, Questions of Method or even The Historical
Meaning of Architecture as a Profession. ! mean, it could
be put in more contemporary- that is, more palatable
terms. Yet as the words theory and philosophy still
signify certain fundamental principles, or indeed certain
professional practices (as they have done since last century),
let us accept the two terms and attempt to unpack their
deeper meaning and build on them. This course will last
three months - a short time for building the foundations
of the profession of the archjtect, that is, its ethical and
moral content. Still, we are convinced that three months of
planned and clear work can yield better results than a year
of directionless, unplanned labour. It is in this spirit that
I ask for your cooperation, because if a teacher makes her
experience available to her students, then those students
through their interest in that experience - require from the
teacher a continual self criticism This is the way, the only
- .
way, to approach university-level teaching.

Let us set aside the idealistic definition (it is important
to narrow the scope of the problem), which sets up a vicious
circle by attempting to define the term 'theory' theoretically,
as if it were a theoretical form somehow distinct from
practice. For us, theory relates to practice, in that practice
is rationally and necessarily demonstrated through theory,
while theory is shown to be realistic and rational through
its practice.
49
Let's take an example to explain this: the study of

the sightlines of an auditorium or a theatre, say, involves
a theory based on the length of the hall, the height of the
stage, the gap between the rows of seats, the relation of
the eye of the spectator to the head of the person seated
in front of them, as well as to the focus of attention on the
stage, and even the height, depth and width of that stage.
This theory will form the basis for determining the visual
axes and curvature and rake of the auditorium floor.
But if the theory - that is, the theoretical process - is wrong,
then the rake of the seating will be wrong, visibility will
be impaired and each member of the audience will end up
staring at the back of someone's head instead of at the stage.
(I hope there are no idealists among you who will argue
that a sight-obscuring slope does not necessarily mean
the theory is incorrect; it's a matter of common sense, and
common sense says this is the architect's responsibility.)
When we strip theory of the trappings that have weighted
it down since the nineteenth century, we have a plain
and simple theory to use as a foundation for architectural
problem-solving and as a synonym for planned practice.
The philosopher is a specialist, a technician like an
engineer or a doctor, but closer to the man on the street,
because his speciality is thinking, and all men think,
whereas only some are engineers or doctors. In this sense,
everyone is a philosopher (unless they're clinically mad).
Philosophy is thus a conception of the world; it is a practical
norm of life. The value of a philosophy can be measured in
terms of its practical 'effectiveness' - by the extentto which
its individual meditations percolate into daily life - and
the historical importance it is assigned. The philosophy
of an era, as the norm of its people, becomes its history;
the philosophy of a time is the history of that time.
The philosophy of architecture is obviously also
the history of architecture, that is, it relates to the different
conceptions of architecture over time. The philosophy
of architecture can also be stripped of its academic
appendages, so that it stands before us, straightforward
and welcoming, as a friend to 'history'.
50
Armed with theory (practice) and philosophy (history),

we will embark on our three-month programme together.
Let us be clear that, by history, I do not mean the frozen
version of history embraced by textbooks, but rather history
in action - the history of human labour and toil. We will
examine the various periods of architectural history
by formulating the 'questions' to which the architecture
of each period attempted to respond.
At this point we need to define the personality of
the architect: the architect is a qualified professional who
knows not only the practical aspects of his job, but also
its theory and its history too. He is keenly aware that his
humanity does not exist in a vacuum, but extends beyond
himself, drawing on other people and on nature.
Here I would like to make it clear that we are not
against culture - quite the opposite, we are totally on its
side. It is important, however, to clarify what this word
means. For us, the term culture, used to denote something
frozen, formless, has no meaning whatsoever. What we
want is a culture that is expanded, but in a precise way,
which means that we have to define the issues at stake.
Given that it is impossible to have an encyclopaedic
knowledge today, what we need is lucidity, a precise
perception of the problems facing us: once these have
been defined in the context of the profession, we then have
the option of exploring them in greater depth as required.
At the roundtable discussion that followed my
lectures on the space of architecture in April,1 we got
ta!king about the concept of Kantian space. I argued then
that the space we were talking about was everyday space,
the space of space. l was not trying to say that philosophical
space should not be taken into account, merely that it was
important to define the problem so that we wouldn't fall
into metaphysical abstractions. My lectures prompted a
letter from Bruno Zevi, who wrote that advising students
to engage in personal reflections in response to the specific
problems of their country was to take a position against
culture. We know this is not the case (as we put it in our
reply): the ability to define and to contain problems is
51
essential ifyou wish to avoid the pompous verbosity of

a culture that is heading towards (or has already attained)
a certain futility.
An architect does not have to have been born in a
specific country or belong to a specific race in order to
respond to the speci.fic needs of a region. Everyone
knows that Frank Lloyd Wright's Imperial Hotel in Tokyo
resisted the earthquake better than Japanese constructions.
With this I want to warn architects against regionalism
in th'e old national, political and rhetorical sense. After
rationalism, modern architecture is once again connecting
with what is most vital, primary and fluid. The way we live
may vary from country to country, but the true modern
architect can respond to the realities of any nation, reach
the kind of understanding that sometimes eludes architects
who were born and raised in that country, as was the
case with Le Corbusier in India. It is because of this that
we recommend the observation and study of the realities
of a country as opposed to some crystallised abstraction.
Of course this does not mean that we should draw our
inspiration from the past -far from it! The past cannot
be repeated, and it's anachronistic to attempt to solve the
problems of the present with the means of the past.
It is also an anachronism to endow pure technology
with an expressive value, which s
i not to be found in the
technology itself, but arises only from its application. When
technology's sole virtue lies in its outward appearance,
it becomes mere decoration - as is the case with modern
Italian architecture, especially from the north of Italy,
which relies entirely on novelty for novelty's sake, on
strangeness for the sake of strangeness- on things that
might satisfy the eye, but not the heart or mind. There is
no point in attempting to compete with the H-bomb or
the jet plane: science will always be more efficient, more
coherent, so our most daring efforts will most likely only
lead to an 'engineering complex'. Instead, we have to
understand human beings as they are today - electrified,
mechanised, tormented by the progress they have achieved
but whose meaning they do not yet fully grasp- and to
52
understand this without passively accepting our personality

as some external, pre-established factor. This does not mean
we are against culture, quite the opposite.
In order to distance ourselves from the complex of
the individualist architect - the creator of almost exclusively
beautiful forms - let's look at a series of projects for public
housing from before the war: kitchens, bedrooms, rninlmal
solutions. It is a problem that architects engaged with in
the early days of the modern movement, and it is a legacy
we have to preserve and maintain while freeing ourselves
from the ministrations of those 'creators of (not always so)
beautiful forms' who would bind humankind to forms (and
I'm talking about forms, not creations) defined by their own
selfish individualism, rather than attempt to understand
and help people using their skills and experience - human,
technical and, naturally, artistic.
And so we have the foundation for our programme;
we will study works from abroad, both contemporary and
from the past, while taking our own world and environment
as a base. Our constant yardstick: the conviction that it is
better for many men to be convinced of the goodness and
beauty of an honest architectural solution - be it a house,
the plan for a neighbourhood or a public building, than
to have the new forms discovered by some genius architect
remain the preserve of a select group of intellectual
hangers-on.
First published in Olivia Oiliveira (ed),

'Lina Bo Bardi: Obra Construida', 2G 23/24 (2002)
NOTES
I. Here Llna is referring to a series
of three lectures on 'The problem
of spice In architectural criticism'.
which she gave at the Escola de
8elas-Artes da Unlversldade federal
da Bahla ln Aprll l958. [E.N.J
53
CULTURE AND NON-CULTURE (1958)
Culture is now relegated to books only a few people read:

its connection with everyday life has become ever more
tenuous. On the one hand we have the intellectuals who,
with their sterile, carping eloquence, criticise everything,
find a justification for everything; on the other, the readers
of 'digests' looking for a norm, for clarification in the
form of superficial summaries, and the rest who are simply
abandoned to their own devices. A superficial self-absorbed
cosmopolitan critique has taken the place of a useful
culture - replaced it with a pseudo-culture in whose
reflected light only the erudite man of letters can bask. Any
attempt to solve the real problems experien ced in diverse
countries has given way to a universal panacea distributed
with indifference - and without any real faith that it
will work. This emptiness or lack of thought is masked
with philosophical or critical jargon. The lack of a useful
culture is recognised, yet it continues to be a problem.
In science as well, the end of humankind is anticipated
by a self-referential approach that focuses on the human
ability to decipher scientific problems rather than on
how scientific theories could offer guidance for resolving
the problems of the present.
Why does such a cold diagnosis of the malaise affecting
contemporary society not come with a corresponding
effective solution to the problem? Why is this abstract,
metaphysical, cosmopolitan culture not being replaced with
diverse cultures that have the capacity to respond to the
problems of the many and varied nations wh.ich, together,
form the grand concert of world culture? Why have the
men of letters not yet given way to new humanists with
a technical grounding that enables them to understand
54
CULTURE AND NON-CULTURE
and solve our problems? Between the artful, eloquent man

of letters, the art critic or the obscurantist metaphysical
poet on the one hand and the scientist or the isolated
technician on the other, there lies a mass of humanity that
is facing the problems of existence with despondency,
abandoned by culture.
Thirteen years after the Second World War and the
dispelling of the illusion that it would be possible to change
quickly - by means of force - a state of affairs that appears
anachronistic in the context of contemporary science
and critical thinking, we find ourselves asking what has
to be done before the mass of humanity is not only in
possession of the basic necessities of life, and a roof over
their heads, but also, with regard to culture, no longer
laugh when confronted with modem painting or sculpture,
nor protest against music, poetry, architecture, nor display
incomprehension in face of the machine, which is the
sign of our times, though it is often treated as a necessary
evil, nor ridicule philosophy, equating it with ivory towers
and extravagance. We arc not referring here to the kind
of intellectual posturing that is attracted to problems
solely on account of their novelty value- the position of
the chattering classes who dabble in things they do not
understand simply because they are 'useful for the social
chronicle'. The part of the population that does have direct
experience of economic troubles does not have the time
to devote to solving riddles thatthey do not hold the key to.
Why should the disadvantaged worry about problems that
do not relate to their immediate needs and that they are
unaware of, in any case? This segment of society, driven by
necessity to solve its own problems of daily survival - and
unencumbered with this pseudo-culture - has the strength
required to develop a new and genuine culture.
This latent force is in abundant supply in Brazil,
where a primordial form of civilisation - meaning one
made up of elements that are essential, real and concrete,
rather than something simple and childlike - coincides
with the most advanced forms of modem thought. If we
want to develop a civilisation that is modern and coherent,
55
we need to immerse ourselves in this deep and vital

current of critical and historical potential, but it is no
easy task. The key is not to impose the historico-critical
problemby force, but simply to accept the realities as
they are, to consider all the tendencies, however spurious,
and gradually modify and absorb them, sure in the
knowledge that this is an effective course of political action
and that the reason why earlier efforts failed was that the
avant-gardes or 'cults' ignored the existing reality and
chose to fight in abstractions, with inevitably mediocre
results. Safeguarding as far as possible the genuine, vital
energies of the nation whilst remaining in step with the
currents of international development will be the basis
of the new cultural action. We will strive, above all, not to
downplay or oversimplify the problems, presenting them
as bland, devitalised fare; we will not eliminate a language
that, however specialised and difficult, is nonetheless real,
but will rather interpret and assess these tendencies while
bearing in mind the words of a philosopher of praxis:
'intellectuals, do not stoop when addressing the masses,
stand up straight'.1
First published in Didrio de Not!cias (Salvador, Bahia),

7 September 1958
NOTES
I. Bo BardI was almost certainly

referring to Gramsci here. but
the specific reference In unclear.
56
ARCHITECTURE OR ARCHITECTURE
0958)
A self-critical article in Modulo magazine by Oscar

Niemeyer has stirred a great deal of controversy. Among
the interested public, that is, among architects, it has been
interpreted as a sort of 'confession', a kind of 'mea culpa'.
But what does Niemeyer actually admit to in his
account? Basically, he says the following: 'After my return
from Europe my professional attitude changed dramatically.
Up to then I had been discouraged by my belief that for
as long as social injustice reigned architecture could be
nothing more than transitory, incapable of resolving the
problems of the people. Defeatist, I had a casual attitude
towards my profession, taking on too many projects,
relying on my capacity for improvisation, pandering to the
whims of the privileged, their desire for impact and effect.'
He goes on to announce that he has found a way out of
this moral crisis by deciding to turn down all commercial
projects and devote himself exclusively to important works,
such as the governmental buildings of Brasflia.
In these works, the architect Niemeyer is looking
for solutions that are compact and geometric, simple and
elementary, which he then implements with extreme care.
His account ends by citing Le Corbusier's old definition
'architecture is the masterly, correct and magnificent play
of masses brought together in light'; the aim of his work,
he affirms, is to communicate 'a little beauty and emotion'.
But what is architecture if not the most efficient
means of combating, through its example, that same social
injustice, the very status quo that pained Niemeyer but that
he nonetheless felt obliged to contribute to and perpetuate
(given his popularity and influence over the young). Is the
57
modern architect- as a builder of cities, neighbourhoods

and public housing- not an active combatant in the field
of social justice? What is it that instils moral doubts,
an awareness of injustice, in a strong, confident mind,
if not a keen sense of collective responsibility and, with
this, a willingness to fight for a positive, moral goal?
Rather than approaching real-estate speculation as
a weapon that could be turned against itself (something
his celebrity would have allowed him to do), Niemeyer
has d9ne the opposite. The position of revolt he has chosen
to assume is that of the artist disengaged from social
problems, of art for art's sake. This position is reaffirmed
today in his account, which takes as the foundation
of modern architecture the above-cited definition by
Le Corbusier - one that Corb himself has already moved
beyond. Where is the human in Niemeyer's account?
It's suffocated by forms, by compositions, by the evocation
of monumental European squares, the works of genius
built for popes and grandees, witnesses to an era that
has now disappeared forever.
Social injustice exists, but we can't ignore the
problems and simply hope they disappear. More than
the Museum of Caracas, more than the buildings of
Brasilia - which, according to Niemeyer himself, are
irreproachable in their concepHon and purity -we like
the church in Pampulha and the house in Vassouras,
which have attracted international attention on account
of their simplicity, their human proportions, the modest
and poetic expression of a life that rejects that very
despondency, that struggle between sociaJ needs and
architecture - the struggle that Niemeyer claims to have
overcome by setting out, as the aim of his architecture,
a formal position that denies all human values and all
achievements of Brazilian architecture.
First published in Ditirio de NoUcias (Salvador, Bahia),

14 September 1958
58
HOUSES OR MUSEUMS? 0958)
What should take precedence, houses or museums? Cultural

issues cannot be ignored when the construction of new
neighbourhoods, new housing, forms the basis for a city
plan (and by housing we also mean shops, schools and
public services). The planning of a city cannot overlook two
key public buildings still considered an intellectual luxury:
the museum and the library.
But what is a museum? When we want to describe
a person, thing or idea that is outdated, not practical or
useful, we often say they 'belong in a museum'. The
expression is a clear indicator of the place of museums
in contemporary culture, the perception of them as dusty,
useless spaces. Sometimes museums are merely the stage
for the exhibitionist antics of architects who, rather than
designing them to showcase the 'pieces', create complex
confections with a decorative character that gets in the
way of the 'museology'. On other occasions, the museum
is the setting for dilettantes, for ladies who lunch looking
for something to fill in the time, who dabble in sculpture,
painting or ceramics and exhibit their handicraft in
'museums' that generally lack the one thing that ought to
be there: namely, a real collection of painting and sculpture.
The modern museum has to be didactic, able to marry
conservation with the message that it is the art that takes
pride of place, while everything else has a far more modest
role. This has to be clearly understood by the architect,
who should never use the commission as an opportunity
for self-aggrandising pyrotechnics such as you find, for
example, at the Castello Sforzesco, where Michelangelo's
celebrated Pieta has been encased in a kind of monument
that almost immediately acquired some less than respectful
59
nicknames, or the exhibition of the Bestegui Collection

at the Louvre in Paris, which was displayed against a series
of walls draped in red velvet and gold better suited to a
racing-track clubhouse than to a museum.
The problem of the museum has to be tackled today
on 'didactic' and 'technical' grounds. These foundations
are essential if the museum is not to become petrified, that
is, entirely useless. The experience gained in this field with
the Sao Paulo Museum of Art can be of great use here. After
all, wl.Jat is the point of an isolated work of art, even if it's
exhibited with the most perfect museological technique, if
it remains 'an end in itself', with no connection at all to our
times, with no historical continuity? The visitors, especially
the younger ones, would look at the objects in a superficial
way, without understanding their meaning, their historical
lessons, the light they can shed on the present. Baroque
sculptures, saints, silverware, tiles, paintings, altarpieces
all will be mere artistic curiosities to the visitor. So what
didactic means should we use? The most obvious devices
are written texts, brief and succinct, and not in the
language of the PhD, accompanied by photographs - a sort
of cinematographic commentary. It is only by satisfying
these didactic requirements that the museum will be able
to occupy a vital role and be worthy of standing alongside
housing in the gradation of human needs deserving of
prompt satisfaction.
These considerations are of the utmost importance
as Bahia stands on the brink of creating what could
well become - given the importance of its collection and
the beauty and poetic fascination of the building that will
be its home -the country's most important museum: the
Santa Teresa Museum of Sacred Art. A museum that ought
to have its own didactic voice in order to become a 'true'
museum, something living, and not a 'museum' in the
superannuated sense of the term.
First published in Ditirio de Not!cias (Salvador, Bahia),

5 October 1958
60
THE INVASION (1958)
One of the most dispiriting symptoms of these bitter,

disillusioned times is the indifference of the authorities,
pol iticians, journalists - in short, our nation's leaders - to
technical and scientific problems. They spend huge sums
on public works, draining the nation's finances, without
ever asking whether the works in question will repay
the money spent, whether they really merit that sacrifice.
One of the most serious problems afflicting the world - and
one for which our country has as yet no national strategy,
based on hard data - is social housing. Housing for all.
It's notwith rhetoric that problems are solved.
Programmes and debates are doomed to remajn at the stage
of empty discourse unless they are backed up with a
rigorous approach to social welfare and rigorous, scientific
technical planning.
We have a Federal Department of Public Housing,
but what has it achieved? How does it operate, other than
in sporadic flurries of activity as opposed to a coordinated
approach? Enough of these philanthropic improvisations
that ignore the real roots of the problem. Enough of the
self-consoling lies and distortions that arise for no other
reason than to salve guilty consciences. We urgently need
to implement a national plan for public housing based
on reliable statistical data and sound social and humanist
reasoning. There's an urgent need to bring this matter to
light, and if a national plan is beyond our reach, then we
should have something more modest, provisional even,
but technkal rather than philanthropic - not some Salvation
Army-style rallying around. Public housing is a right,
not a gift. The state has a duty to resolve the situation and
its first step should be to debunk the myths and distortions
61
put about by the private sector, by real-estate speculators

and by those who are aware of the injustice, but instead
of resolutely attempting to tackle the problem trot out
self-justifications to ease their consciences. To do this we
need to eliminate a whole list of things: abstract optimism,
scepticism about state intervention, the belief that public
housing will not solve the housing problem for everyone,
the belief that the poor are to blame for the slums, the
habit of prioritising the interests of the individual over
those pf society.
The question of public housing raises a wide range
of economic and social issues and impinges on- directly
affects- private economic interests. There's a socio-economic
and scientific case to be made for this housing, and we
need to present it in a concerted way, drawing on all kinds
of experts from sociologists and architects to doctors
and scientists. We need to draw attention to the problem.
In Holland, since the interwar period, more than one sixth
of the population of Amsterdam and The Hague have lived
in state-owned housing. In Sweden during the same period,
a third of housing was state-subsidised. In the wake of
the Second World War, almost all of Europe tackled the
problem head-on.
In other countries, social housing is provided for that
part of the population that has some guaranteed income,
however low. In Brazil, however, many of those who
would benefit from this housing have no fixed income at
all, only casual earnings, which amount to very little. There
is therefore a need to shore up the economic foundations
of a large section of the population, creating conditions
for employment and eliminating the idea of parasites and
the so-called 'dregs' of society. The building of new social
housing may actually be part of the solution, as many of
the future residents could be employed in the construction,
instilling a work ethic that could be continued and later
applied elsewhere.
The maintenance of the housing and the surrounding
streets could be entrusted to resident families, who would
in return get a discount on their rent.
62
THE INVASION
By carefully studying the solutions adopted in other

countries and conducting an exact analysis of the conditions
and needs that prevail here, we may manage to address
the problem, at least on a state level if not on a federal one
(a national plan).
We're at the eleventh hour now. We have to solve this

problem soon, fulfil a 'right' that can no longer be denied
with the excuse that if the poor had access to modern
housing they would only keep their chickens in the bath-tub
or their shoes in the refrigerator. The 'invasion' has to be
contained through serious and honest planning, not by
sending in the riot police .
First published in Didrio de Notfcias (Salvador, Bahia),

12 October 1958
63
THE MOON (1958)
This is the year of space exploration. Man has quit the

Earth) and wants to go to the Moon. But we're not going
to sing the praises of this century of science, or proclaim
that a new age has dawned, that we are in awe of recent
discoveries. Without doubt man has made progress,
and if this progress has yielded (besides philosophical
controversies) two world wars and the H-bomb, it is not
the fault of progress itself, but of those who harnessed it
at a particular moment and lost control of the situation.
This year, as the debates of 1945 turn into reality, we are
faced with a situation without precedent in our history
a shocking anachronism. Man increasingly dominates
nature - he knows the composition of matter and can
now roam through space - but he remains 'ancient', still
thinking along ancient lines, acting in ancient ways and
staring up on the fruit of his labours with the same startled
eyes as he did thousands of years ago. And that fruit? -the
prospect of self-destruction, the yawning chasm that has
opened up between technical and scientific progress and
the human capacity to think. Artificial satellites orbit outer
space, but man continues to wrestle with his own petty
concerns. The author monitors his own vital signs, letting
his readers know whether his hands are hot or cold, dry
or clammy. Critics bicker and squabble over the precise
date, down to the last minute or second, of a work of art.
Academics brood over the interpretation of a single word
in a classical text. Philosophers compose and recompose
the history of philosophy (in the sense of writing manuals).
Newspapers are filled with party politics and beauty
pageants. Cinema, with rare exceptions, is devoted to
'blockbusters' and 'feel-good' movies. School is cut off from
64
THE MOON
life. Fed by the canards of the press, humanity is rushing

headlong towards its own demise, without its leaders
being able to do anything about it, since they are no longer
in control of the situation. Man goes on working as he
has always done, yet the product of his tho�asand-year
labour has turned against him, in the blink of an eye.
This modern, but still culturally ancient man is beset by
overwhelming problems.
Feeding and housing the pressing mass of humanity
will call for solutions that go beyond the usual reach of
those who still believe themselves to be the 'arbiters' of these
masses, which raises the question of a possible triumph of
irrationality that will either lead humanity back into the
light of civilisation- or into chaos.
The Moon has changed her countenance. Her gentle,
irrational, poetic aspect has hardened into scientific reality,
suggesting that man needs to seek his poetry elsewhere.
Not in narcissistic meditations or in an endless revisiting
of petty personal problems, but by taking stock of his work
and his responsibilities, by giving up 'politics' in favour of
studying human problems, by replacing philanthropy with
a recognition of human rights, by acquiring a grounding
in technology that will enable him to tame the mechanism
which he himself has created and which now threatens to
destroy him. Like a snake sloughing off its old skin, he will
struggle to shed his 'antiquity'. But once it has been cast off,
it can then be incorporated into his cultural heritage, as
part of a never-forgotten historical continuity. And this
synthesis will form the basis for his attempt to build his
humanity anew, and to rediscover his poetry.
First published in Didrio de Notfcias (Salvador, Bahia),

19 October 1958
65
INDUSTRIAL ART (1958)
Today there is a certain confusion surrounding the idea

of craftsmanship, the arisant and the folk artist. There is
a whole literature (we do not want to use the word rhetoric)
on the subject What is craftsmanship? It is the expression
.
of a particular time and society - of a worker who has

some capital, however modest, which enables him to work
raw materials into a finished product that he can then
sell on, bringing him both material profit and the spiritual
satisfaction that comes from conceiving something and
making it with your own hands.
But what is a craftsman' today? It is someone who
'
makes something a specialist with no capital of his own

,
who hires out his labour to whoever is providing the raw

material, be it an individual client or a business owner,
and who receives a wage in return for the work that he
carries out. He is thus a member of the so-called proletariat.
And what is folk art, when it is genuine? It is Art, with a
capita l A Which brings us to the question: is there a valid
justification for government interventions into this
contemporary realm of pseudo-artisanal production?
Obviously not, because such interventions would
deprive the craftsman of his raison d'etre, the satisfaction
of being able to work artistically - to create an object,
own it materially, and sell it on. Italy, Spain and Portugal
excel in this kind of paternalistic protectionism, spawning
various pueblos or instituti d'arte artigianali- real houses
ofhorrors, catalogues of mediocrity .
But this is not the main problem. The most pressing

problem that faces us is the divide between the technician
and the workman- a divide that arose when the age of
craftsmanship came to an end.
66
INDUSTRIAL ART
The architect who designs a building does not mix

with the bricklayer, the carpenter or the ironworker, and
the same divide exists between the designer of household
objects and the ceramicist or glass-blower, or the furniture
designer and the joiner. Each to his own. The technical
draughtsman has an inferiority complex about the limits
of his practical experience, while the labourer is demeaned
by the lack of ethical satisfaction in his work.
To get to the heart of this issue, one could start to
collect all existing artisanal material - old and new - in a
given country, creating a vast living museum, a Museum
of Craftsmanship and Industrial Art, that would illuminate
the historical and popular roots of a nation's culture. This
museum could be completed with a school of industrial art
(art in the sense of metier) in order to foster contact between
technicians, draughtsmen and makers. The school could
express, in a modern way, what craftsmanship used to be,
and prepare a new generation to engage, not with future
utopias, but with reality as it exists and as we know it, to set
right the situation we find ourselves in, where the architect
in his studio is unaware of the realities of the construction
site, where the worker does not know how to read a plan;
where the furniture designer designs a wooden chair as if
it were made of iron; and where the typesetter composes
mechanically without knowing basic rules of typography.
One divorced from practice and immersed in theory, the
other mired in the mechanical labour of welding pieces and
tightening nuts without knowing the purpose of their work.
Ours is a collective time. TI1e work of the autonomous
artisan is being replaced with teamwork, and people
have to be prepared for this collaboration where there is no
hierarchy separating designers from producers. Only then
can we recover the joy of moral participation in a work.
Collective rather than individual participation, the
technical outcome of the craftwork of our day: industry.
First published in Ditfrio de Notfcias (Salvador, Bahia),

26 October 1958
67
TECHNOLOGY AND ART (1960}
We dedicate this note to the young Concrete artist who -

faced with some panels displaying a diagram of radar
signals at the Bahia Museum of Modern Art - asked
why we had decided to call our exhibition of engines and
electronic parts 'Concrete Design', and to another young
museum visitor who declared himself to be 'all for
technology, not for art'. We would also like to remember
Antonio Grarnsci, who tackled the issue of technological
humanism with great clarity more than 30 years ago now,
in his book Gli intellettu<�li e l'organizzazione della cultura.
With the exhibition Concrete Design (named not to
poke fun at the proponents of Concrete Art, but to clarify
the terminology), the Museum of Modern Art in Bahia
wanted to draw attention to an issue that affects Brazil
today: the lingering of certain 'isms', and concretism in
particular.1 Forty years ago, these 'isms' foretold the coming
of a new era, a new culture, and they drew their validity
precisely from this 'prophesy', from the 'vanguard' which
foresaw a future connection between art and science.
These 'isms' combined an enthusiasm for the scientific
with a despair in face of the irremediable loss of the
sentimental values of literary humanism. For example the
Dutch De Stijl movement, led by Theo van Doesburg, called
for rigour and a concrete worldview, whereas Dadaism
overcame its anguish at the loss of the values of traditional
culture by mocking this culture and blaming it for the
eruption of the world's worst-ever catastrophe: the First
World War.
But the reality of today negates any stance of romantic
scientism or revolt. There can be no 'rigour', no 'structure',
no 'internal logic of development'2 in (visual) works where
68
TECHNOLOGY AND ART
the content and representation do not correspond to a

real issue, but merely relate to an artificial problem, with
an arbitrary solution defined a priori by the artist (which
makes it not so much a solution as a romantico-technical
title). The themes foreseen by Malevich, Mondrian and
Theo van Doesburg have now become reality. They are real
insofar as science seems to be equated with art in terms
of its capacity to respond to man's aesthetic and emotional
needs. This is the problem raised by certain 'isms', which
we have to deal with today: the emotion of science,
translated by man into technology, is the same as that
transmitted by the work of art. Balance, structure, rigour
- that whole other world which is unknown to man, but
which is suggested by art, and for which we feel nostalgia.
And so art once more becomes identified with
technique, just as it was in primitive times, when knowledge
was associated with magic, with an unknown, poetic and
merely suggested world. The great era of literary humanism
is ove.tr. Man is swiftly being carried away by a mechanism
of his own making, one approached -in contrast to past
civilisations- with an increased critical capacity.
A new method imposes itself, both lucid and dry.
Our new civilisation is defined by its capacity to accept or
confront, to renounce or overcome, its problems, including
the problems of art. We can see the dualism of art/science
beginning to move towards fusion and unification with the
emergence of a new kind of intellectual, one who focuses
on contemporary cultural problems, rejecting both the
pedantic literary intellectualism and the limited scientific
positivism of the past.
The new humanism, with its technical worldview,
tends it:o merge cultural problems into one other, through
a proc-ess of simplification. This simplification is necessary,
not only to grasp the technology - which in the years
immediately before and after the war got into a vicious
cycle of excessive details and organisational excess that
reduced it to one almost baroque example: the automobile
- but the whole of human life. This sense of a synthesis
of science and art, this process of simplification, puts into
69
question the idea that man is either wholly technologicaJ

or wholly aesthetic - as well as that old East/West divide
where the West is seen as the exclusive realm of theory and
the Orient as the exclusive realm of aesthetics. It is in this
capacity of synthesis that we remember Antonio Gramsci.
First published in Ditirio de Not(cias (Salvador, Bahia),

23-24 October 196o
NOTES between mediums of expre$$ion
I. We refer here to concretism and (more so) of content. While
In the plastic arts. Concretlsm In concrete poetry pares back language
poetry. which established itself in order to arrive at Its destination
quicklythrough its dry and more quickly, to communicate
technical L.anguage. succeeded its idea more directly, In the arts.
an relnvigorating all sectors of contemporary concretlsm Is
8razlll•n literature. from poetry something purely formal. Umited
to JournaUsm. Though a latecomer to for-m and eliminating content.
to 8rull. this movement m1naaed to This 'technical' difference is an
obtain real results here. something incomplete example of 'the identity
lt failed to d o over the course of of the arts" (es defined by Croce)
+0 years In wealthier countries. The and Its absolute Independence

same can be said of Le Corbusier's fromtechnical modes of expression.
Influence on Brazilian architecture. 2. Catalogue to the exhibition
Intermsof concretism. the of Concrete Art at the Museu de
difference between poetry and Arte Moderna de Rio de Janeiro.
theplastic art.s is the difference Quotation from Max 8ill.
70
THE NORTHEAST 0963)
This inaugural exhibition at the Unhao Museum of

Popular Art could be called 'Northeastern Civilisation'.
Civilisation, but stripped of the courtly-rhetorical
associations of the word. Civilisation meaning the practical
aspects of culture, of people's daily lives. This exhibition
aims to present a civilisation considered in all its details
and studied from a technical point of view (even if
the word technical here relates to primitive crafts), from
lighting to kitchen spoons, from bedspreads to clothes,
teapots, toys, furniture and weapons.
What it represents is the desperate, furiously
positive striving of people who refuse to be 'dismissed',
who demand their right to life; a continual struggle to
avoid sinking into despair, an affirmation of beauty
wrought with a rigour imposed by ever-present reality.
The raw material: garbage - dead lightbulbs,
scraps of fabric, motor oil cans, old boxes and newspapers.
Each object tests the limitations of 'deprivation',
of misery. And it is this, together with the continuous,
insistent presence of the 'useful' and the 'necessary', which
constitutes the value of this production, with its poetic
of things that do not come forfree, that cannot be conjured
out of fantasy. The exhibition offers a critical overview
of this modern reality, presenting an example of the direct
simplification evident in forms that buzz with vital energy
- forms of artisanal and industrial design. We insist
that the identity of the object based on technical production
must be linked to the reality of the materials, and not to
some choreographed folkloric formal abstraction.
We call this the Museum of Popular Art, as opposed
to Folklore, because folklore is a static, regressive inheritance
71
which depends on the paternalistic support of the official

overseers of culture, whereas popuJar art (we use the word
art not only in the artistic but also in the technical sense)
encapsulates the progressive attitude of a popular culture
that engages with real problems.
We hope that this exhibition will prompt young
people to consider the question ofhow to simplify (which
does not mean impoverish) today's world - which is the
route we must follow if we are to find a poetics within
technical humanism.
This exhibition is an accusation.
An accusation levelled by a milieu that refuses to
despair of the human condition, despite being forgotten
and treated with indifference. It is an accusation that speaks,
not of humbleness, but of the desperate striving of a culture
to rise above the degrading conditions imposed on it.
First published in Nordeste, the catalogue of

the inaugural exhibition at the Unhao Museum
of Popular Art, 1963
72
- -·
. -:-
IN SOUTH AMERICA: WHAT'S
HAPPENING AFTER CORBU? (1967)
With the confidence that comes naturally to the rich, well

educated and handsome, C Ray Smith, Associate Editor
(Features and Interior Design) of the important US journal
Progressive Architecture, presents a panorama of architecture
in South America.1
He interviews both renowned and up-and-coming
architects, makes his prognosis and, after proclaiming
his discovery of a 'New Wave' -something to sweep away
the last vestiges of Le Corbusier -paternalistically advises
South American architects not to copy the 'international
industrialised' architecture of the developed world, but
to draw inspiration instead from the communal huts of
the indigenous Indians, the 'ranchitos' and shantytowns
of the poor, as the correct course for underdeveloped
architects working in an underdeveloped continent.
If only young Latin American architects were to
place themselves firmly in their own generation, he says,
and work to overcome the 'disorganisation', technological
backwardness and 'sociological' aspirations, then they
would be able to tackle the real problem of architecture
today, namely 'how to provide huge quantities of
inexpensive mass shelter in terms of a jewellery-like art
form'. This new direction mightbring the two continents,
North and South America, to a closer architectural
understanding.
Acting on a misconception (we would prefer not
to think bad faith), and thinly disguising his disdain for
Corb's 'plastic-formalist' positions, which are dismissed out
of hand, the author broadcasts his conviction that the true
architecture is North American, and based on a system of
77
industrial mass production to which young Latin American

architects do not 'yet' have access, on account of their own
and their nations' underdevelopment.
Relocating to North America drained both Gropius
and Mies van der Rohe and put paid to the inventiveness
of Grosz and to the violence of Kurt Weill, who was reduced
to the composer of saccharine film scores. It also convinced
Brecht and Adorno that the mass media is a formidable
instrument in the hands of monopolistic capitalism,
and in order for this 'mechanism' to serve a fairer and
more human society, it has to be underpinned by humanist
values - the very ones that generated Le Corbusier's
'plastique' architecture, which is actually not plastique
at all, though that's how it's conveniently described today,
deliberately overlooking all the revolutionary values
political and social -of the rationalist movement that
was rationalism.
The poetics of rationalism did not dry up, but its
revolutionary and political content was deliberately passed
over by later tendencies, which history will reveal for
what they really are - a step backwards to positions that
rationalism had itself gone beyond, with its affirmation
of truth in construction and social equality.
Regarding the'new' organic architecture of the latter
half of the twenieth
t century, it seems that with a few
exceptions - such as the great Frank Lloyd Wright, who
stems from the nineteenth-century English Arts & Crafts
movement, from Ruskin to Morris; or the pioneers
celebrated by Whitman, whose political impact is as yet
unmeasured; or Antonf Gaudi, who was too Spanish
(indeed, too Catalan) to have any serious international
following - it shou Id be seen as one of those movements
which have arisen out of the desire to reform a whole
swathe of western culture, but which do little more than
resurrect historical situations, endow them with new
meanings to defend the same old positions, and define that
as progress. The same applies to the 'brutalisms', 'actions',
'happenings' and other movements that can be construed
as reactions to rationalist shoe-box architecture.
78
WHAT'S HAPPENING AFTER CORBU?
To the ranks of the mass media, now accepted as

a natural phenomenon rather than analysed in terms of
its historical and social causes, we m ight now add mass
architecture, a product of the 'construction industry', which
likewise cannot be critically evaluated through the lens
of idealistic historicism, or formal or linguistic criticism,
without its true determining base - its historical and social
dimensions - being taken into account.
This does not mean that we should reject the
computer and value the mechanical age over the electronic,
but rather that we should place the computer in its true
historical perspective, seeing it as the means of creating
a new mass culture and, with this, a new architecture, on
a vast scale.
The fact Le Corbusier was inv ited to come to an
underdeveloped South America at a time when he
was b eing ignored or slighted in developed countries,
and that he exercised an enormous influence here, is
important in terms of a critical appraisal of the potential
to define a cultural vision for South America. If his
teachings took on other dimensions here, we must see this
as a consequence of cultural factors. The technico-folkloric
position advocated by the North American journalist is
-irrefutably - tied to a paternalistic view of Latin America .
The continent's architectural instability is a reflection of

its ec onomic, political and social instability, of its cultural
uncertainties and, above all, its lack of economic, politica 1
and social freedoms.
The New Wave, la Nueva Ola, is a young generation's
attempt to distance itself from the ideology of an era that
'dismantled man in order to reassemble him', like Galy Gay,
the forcibly transformed porter in Bertolt Brecht's Man
Equals Man. The New Wave should be understood less as
an overcoming of Corbusi an values and more as an attempt
to find a way out of an inhuman industrial monopoly. But
what the American editor failed to notice was the danger
of folk lore inherent in this attempt which summarily
' ' ,
dismisses the legacy of a major movement, which, when

its tn.te dimensions are grasped, offers the only means we
79
have to move towards a new architecture - an architecture

that uses raionalist
t instruments to measure the experience
of 'non-perfect' and 'clustered cell' structures.
An architecture of a new electronic era of genuine mass
civilisation, in which man assumes rational responsibility for
all technological achievements and monitors their progress
as they unfold- the 'master' of his fate rather than the victim
of events that he passively accepts as inevitable.
Architecture stands at an impasse. After Corb, after the
North American 'block' style, after the Wrightian/Gaudian
tendencies, what path should it take? In Europe and Japan,
the search has begun to find an architectural expression
appropriate to our atomic age. In South America, social
problems condition such a search. A substantial legacy
cannot be forgotten: the rationalist legacy.
First published inMirante das Aries 1

(January-February 1967)
NOTES
I. Progroulve Arch itecture. New York.,
September 1966. 1-+0-55. Bo Bardl

followed her text tn this same
edition of Mirant� das Artes with
passages from C Ray Smlth•s article.
80
THE NEW TRIANON (1967)
1957 was the year they demolished the 'old' Trianon, a

political centre in Sao Paulo where many illustrious careers
were launched and many meetings and banquets were
held on its sun-filled belvedere (practically the only one in
the whole city), which lives on to this day in the memories
of past generations of children.
What remained of it was a bare plot facing the
'Brazilian woodland' of Siqueira Campos Park. And one
afternoon, while I was passing this lot on Avenida Paulista,
I realised that this was the only place to build the Sao Paulo
Museum of Art, the only site, in view of its special place
in the popu Jar imagination, worthy of housing the first
museum of art in Latin America. The city government of
Sao Paulo had proposed a plan for a public building on
that site that, although decent enough, was not equal to the
heritage of the old Trianon. Time was short, the construction
company had already been chosen, work was about to
begin. Adhemar de Barros was Mayor; Jose Carlos de
Figueiredo Ferraz was the Secretary of Public Works. I did
some research on what was required of a modern public
museum and meeting place, put together a preliminary
proposal, called Edmundo Monteiro (director of Diarios
Associados, which has supported the museum since its
inceptiion) and together we went to see the Mayor and the
Secretary of Public Works. We were met with enthusiasm
from the Mayor (except that he wanted a ballroom under
the belvedere, instead of the popular theatre I had designed)
and a bucket of cold water from the Secretary of Works:
'I don't have the money, it was all used up on the "turtle"
of Ibirapuera, which is falling to pieces, but congratulations
anyway on the design and the structural concept.'
81
Undeterred, Edmundo decided to raise the money himself:

'Let's go and see the Museum Board!' So we did. But the
board and its chairman (Or Assis Chateaubriand) had
just signed an agreement with Annie Penteado: the huge
headquarters building of the FAAP (Funda<;ao Armando
Alvares Penteado, designed by the late founder of the
institution himself,1 and revised by Perret in articulo mortis,
before being sorely manhandled by various meddlers, was
to be the future base for the Sao Paulo Museum of Art,
which )N'ould be integrated with and in a few years absorb
the Foundation's fledgling art gallery. End of story.
I accepted an invitation from the governor of Bahia to
go up north and found and direct a museum of modern art
there. Then, in 1960, I received a telegram: work on the
Museum-Trianon was about to begin. The agreement
between the Museum Board and the Foundation had fallen
apart (apparently after some haggling over who should pay
for the soap used to clean the Foundation - which perhaps
didn't want any 'cleaning' done at all). The Mayor was still
wanting to build a 'large ballroom' and have the Sao Paulo
Museum of Art on top. The belvedere had to be 'column
free', with 8m of headroom between it and the museum
structure, which was to be no more than two storeys high.
My attempts to revive the idea of a theatre were in vain:
there had to be a 'ballroom' down below, nothing else
would do. The construction company - the one that had
won the tender - was on standby.
No columns, a 70m clear span, with 8m headroom.
My design could only have been realised in prestressed
concrete. I remembered the former Secretary of Public
Works, now a professor at the Polytechnic School and
the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, and his praise
for my design, and I arranged to meet him: 'Would you
be interested in working for free on a public building that
will be of major cultural importance to Sao Paulo? I'll be
working for free too, only the draughtsmen will be paid.'
Jose Carlos de Figueiredo Ferraz accepted the invitation,
and work began that same year. I had to overcome some
objections from the technicians at City Hall and from
82
THE NEW TRIANON
the construction company, who weren't entirely convinced

by the 'home-grown' solution for the pre-stressed concrete,
and wanted Freyssinet instead. But in the end we worked
everything out. The new Trianon-Museum i s entirely the
product of this nation, from the pre-stressed concrete to
the glazing (with its s.sm-high windows).
Please excuse this lengthy preamble, but every day
we get so many requests for more information about the
Trianon, which is a public work, and as we have made a
commitment to the population, here is our account, our
attempt to explain what was seen in thebeginning as an 'act
of violence' (perhaps justifiably, but still. ..) or an 'act of faith'.
The new Trianon-Museum consists of a semi-buried
structure (running parallel to Avenida 9 de Julho), with
a raised belvedere on top. The base of the building contains
the 'ballToom' demanded by the Mayor's office in 1957- only
it is now going to be a large public hall, a place for public
and political gatherings (the ballroom was designed in the
hope that there would be some such change of function).
A large theatre/auditorium and smaller auditorium/
projection room complete this lower part. Suspended above
this, fronting Avenida Paulista, is the Sao Paulo Museum of
Art (MASP). A clear span 70m in length and 29m deep, with
a sm cantilever on either side of the longitudinal beams.
The whole thing is raised 8m, supported by four columns
at the end. The upper floor houses the main art gallery,
the lower floor the offices, temporary exhibition spaces,
library, etc. Steel trusses attach the volume of the museum
to the beams. An open-air stairway and glass and steel
goods lift connect the museum floors to the public hall.
All of the installations, air-conditioning included, will be
exposed to view. The finishing is kept as simple as possible:
exposed concrete, whitewash, granite flagstones in the
public hall, tempered glass, plastic walls, whitewashed
concrete in the museum building, with black rubber
flooring. The belvedere is an open 'plaza' lined with plants
and flowers and paved in natural 'cobbles', in the best
Ibero-Brazilian tradition. Small reflective pools with plants
are also envisaged.
83
Through its monumental simplicity, the Trianon

complex wi 11 re-propose the - now highly unpopular
themes of rationalism. Above all, it will draw a clear
distinction between the 'monumental' (in the civic
collective sense) and the 'elephantine'.
Monumentality does not depend on 'dimensions',
as such. The Parthenon is monumental, despite its reduced
scale. Fascist constructions (in Hitler's Germany,
Mussolini's Italy) are not monumental but elephantine,
in all t9eir bloated arrogance, their defiance of logic. What
I call monumental has nothing to do with size or 'pomp'
but relates to a sense of collectivity, that is, a collective
consciousness. Anything that goes beyond the 'particular',
reaching out to the collective, can (and perhaps should) be
monumenta I. This idea might be derided in some European
countries - the ones that stake their political lives and
futures on a false notion of individualism, the falsely
democratic individualism of the 'consumer society' - but
it has a powerful potential in a younger nation hoping to
build its future democracy on other foundations. I talked
above about 're-proposing' rationalism. Rationalism has to
be revived as a defence against architectural irrationalism
and as a political response to all those who stand to gain
from an 'irrationalist' position presented as avant-garde
and progressive. That said, it is important to eliminate the
'perfectionist' strands of rationalism, its metaphysical and
idealistic legacy, and cope with the architectural 'incident'.
For a variety of administrative and political reasons,
the construction of the museum was delayed; a number
of 'incidents' occurred. Some ham-fisted welding and
over-cutting of the rebars for the four columns forced us to
undertake some unplanned vertical pre-stressing- but this
extending of the columns was incorporated as an 'accepted
incident' rather than as a mistake to be covered up,
smoothed over.
The architectonic work represents a logic of
'propositions', which is different from the 'term logic' still
favoured by idealist culture to this day. And as such, it is a
logic that is easier to demonstrate, closer to science. A work
84
THE NEW TRIANON
of architecture can be evaluated in linguistic terms, from

a semantic, syntactic and pragmatic point of v.iew, that is,
accordin g to its 'transmission of information', its structure,
its historical formation and its sociological impact. But all of
these components are components of a logic of propositions.
And these propositions are essentially content-based .
The spectacular Sydney Opera House is today seen as

the height of the avant-garde The structural exhibitionism,
.
the elegance of the graphics and the formal solutions all

seem to offer our eyes something truly new to feast on.
But the meaning of the work, its consequence, its logistics,
make it a traditional 'theatre' in the most common sense
of the term, a much more reactionary' work, in terms of
'
theatre, than the empty barn or limewashed garage

envisaged by Antonin Artaud.
The architects of today, the architects of young nations,
in particular- those who contribute day in, day out to the
creation of their national cultures - have to come up with
an exhilarating solution to the problem .
In the Sao Paulo Museum of Art I sought to return

to certain positions. r tried (hopefully not in vain) to
recreate the 'atmosphere' of the Trianon. I would like to see
people goin g there to attend open-air exhibitions, take part
in debates, listen to music, watchfilms. I would like to see
children play there in the morning and afternoon sun.
And to be fair-minded about it, there should even be space
for outdoor gigs and everyday bad taste.
Edited version of an article first pub lished in

Mirante das Artes 5 (September-October 1967)
NOTES the true architect to have been the

I. The design of FAAP Is credited to Bolglan Auguste Perret (1874- 1954),
the Institution's creator. Armando with whom Penteado had contac-t
A.lvares Penteado. but some believe in Paris.
85
PLANNING THE ENVIRONMENT:
'DESIGN' AT AN IMPASSE (1976)
There was no money at home. I was obliged to make

engravings and drawings. I remember in particular the
Easter eggs. Round, rotating on their axis, creaking like
doors. I sold them in a craft shop on Neglinnaya Street for
ten to fifteen kopeks a piece. Since then I have harboured
an unbounded hatred for ladies' watercolours, Russian
style and 'artisanal' production.
Vladimir Mayakovsky
These remarks may be judged 'obvious' or 'outdated'.

But T would respond that this judgement of 'obvious' or
'outdated' could apply to everything thal Louches directly
on lhe interests of certain well-defined castes. The timid
conclusions of the 12th World Congress of Architecture
in Madrid in May 1975 - theme: Ideas and Technology in
Architecture - demonstrate this fear of the 'obvious' and
th e 'already outdated'. In that instance what was obvious
and outdated was the position of the architect in relation
to the masses. In the specific field of architecture there has
been the most flagrant betrayal of the principles that
in formed the whole modern movement, which were first
interrupted by the Second World War, and then later
abandoned as 'outdated'.
In this cancerous avalanche of disorientation
everything is swallowed up, dissipated - rapidly ageing
into total obsolescence and losing its meaning. In this way
'wild' architecture trounces Antonf Gaudi; 'acrylics' and
'metals' crush Anton Pevsner and Jean Arp. To define
the true values of Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion
of 1929 would require precise historical research, yet the
86
'DESIGN' AT AN IMPASSE
original meaning of Le Corbusier's architecture is given

barely a passing thought and Frank Lloyd Wright's work
is salvaged only by the good will of a few critics - despite
this, Tnis Fallingwater is on the way to losing all of its
original communicative force.
Art is not so innocent. The grand attempt to make
industrial design a motor for renewing society as a whole
has failed - an appalling indictment of the perversity of
a system. The awareness of over a quarter of the world's
population - the portion that used to believe in unlimited
progress - is raised. The recent history of 'making' in the
arts is being re-examined in a lucid way, ruling out any
revival of a Romantic crafts-based movement in the mould
of John Ruskin or William Morris. The current debate has
shed light on the way that designhas been used as the
tool of a system - an anthropological approach to the field
of art, as opposed to the aesthetic enquiry that guided the
whole development of western artistic culture from
antiquity up to the avant-gardes.
At work here is not a blanket rejection of the past,
but a careful process of review. Any attempt to combat
the hegemony of technology - the successor to the recent
technological inferiori ty complex' of arts in the west
'
must contend with the structure of a system: the problem

is fundamentally poli tical and economic. The idea of
renewing society through art, a Bauhaus credo, proved
to be a mere utopia - a cul.tural miscalculation or a
means of salving the conscience of people who themselves
wanted for nothing. From these beginnings, it has developed
into a kind of rampantly proliferating metastasis that has
swallowed up the essential achievements of the modern
movement, transforming its key idea -planning - into the
bankrupt utopia of a technocratic intelligentsia who, in
promoting 'rationality' over 'emotionality', have emptied
the concept of its meaning, fetishistically converting it into
abstract models that equate the world of statistics with the
world of humans.
If the problem is fundamentally political and economic,
then the part played by the 'agent' in the field of 'design' is,
87
despite everything, crucial. lt relates to what Bertholt Brecht

called 'the ability to say no'. Artistic freedom has always
been 'individual', but true freedom can only be collective.
By this l mean a freedom that recognises social responsibility
and that breaks down the barriers put up by aesthetics,
the concentration camp of western civilisation - a freedom
demarcated by both the huge limitations and the huge
advances in scientific practice (and I mean scientific practice,
not technology that has degenerated into technocracy).
The strategy of 'non-planning' - a romantically suicidal
reaction to the failure of the technocrats- must urgently
be countered by a strategy for planning our environment,
which covers everything from urbanism to architecture
to industrial design and other cultural manifestations.
A reintegration, a simplified unification of the component
factors of culture.
And what about a country that is still dependent
on the structures of capitalism, that has not experienced
a democratic-bourgeois national revolution, and that
embarked on industrialisation without casting off the
vestiges of oligarchy?
The popular culture of Brazil- a latecomer to the story
of western-style industrialisation- still contains elements
from prehistory and from Africa, which give it a vital
energy. All the contradictions inherent in the great western
misadventure are rapidly becoming apparent, pointing
to a developing crisis. A process of industrialisation that
in other nations took centuries to unfold is happening
here in the space of a few years. Abrupt, unplanned, its
structures simply imported, this industrialisation is having
an impact similar to an uncontrollable natural catastrophe,
though it's an entirely manmade process. The corrupt
mechanisms of real-estate speculation, the lack of provision
of low-income housing, the profit-seeking proliferation
of industrial design - of gadgets, objects that are for the
most part unnecessary - these things are weighing down
Brazil, creating significant barriers to the development
of a true indigenous culture. We must develop a collective
consciousness - any diversion at this time is tantamount
88
'DESIGN' AT AN IMPASSE
to a crime, in view of the erosion of our culture. If it s

i the
role of the economist and the sociologist to offer objective

analysis, then the artist must act as a bridge connecting
not just with the intellectual but with the engaged public.
What we need is a review of the country's recent
history- an assessment of Brazil's 'popular' culture, long
considered the poor relation of high culture. This does
not mean an assessment of folklore traditions, which have
always received paternalistic support from high culture,
which sees them 'from outside'. Rather, it means
Aleijadinho and Brazilian culture before the French Artistic
Mission. It means the people from the Northeast, working
leather and empty tins, the village-dwellers, the blacks
and the Indians, the masses who invent, contribute to the
creation of something that is tough, dry, hard to digest.
This urgency, this sense that we can't wait any longer,
should b e the real foundation for the Brazilian artist's work.
It's a reality that does not need to be boosted by artificial
stimulants but can draw on an immediate store of cultural
riches, a unique anthropological inheritance sown with
tragic and his toric events. Brazil has become industrialised:
in order to study the new reality we must first accept it.
It is impossible to revive extinct social forms, and it is a
mistake to propose the creation of crafts centres, a return
to craftsmanship, as an antidote to an industrialisation
that is alien to the cultural principles of the nation. Why?
Because Brazil has never had a defined social class of
artisans. What it has had instead is a native, scattered
pre-artisanal form of production, supplemented by the
immigration of small numbers of Spanish, Portuguese
and Italian craftsmen and, in the nineteenth century, the
creation of some manufacturing operations. But artisanal
production? Never.
A development of the pre-artisanal culture of Brazi I
might have been feasible in the days before the country
embarked on the course of dependent capitalism, when a
bourgeois-democratic revolution was still a possibility. Had
the country taken a different path, industrial design might
have been able to contemplate other options, more closely
89
related to the real needs of the country (even if these

cultural options were considerably more limited than
the ones available to China or Finland, say).
What we need to do now is to start again, from a new
reality. One thing however is certain: those who concern
themselves only with a small segment of society, those who
are content to give a serene account of facts, those who
don't care to make a noise - they are definitely on the
'opposing side'.
lt is a mistake to want to eliminate collective reality
in the name of aesthetics at any cost. All rebellions and
avant-gardes have their basis in aesthetics, regardless
of any assertions to the contrary. We must also take into
account the integration into aesthetics of kitsch. True kitsch
-either a product of the cultural complacency of the
German bourgeois.ie around the turn of the twentieth
century, or the political kitsch of Hitler- is beyond
recuperation. But it is important to accept things that
are aesthetically negative and to make use of them when
necessary: art (like architecture and industrial design)
is always a political operation.
First published in Malasartes 2

(December 1975 - February 1976)
90
ARCHITECTURE AND TECHNOLOGY
(1979)
Artigas and Kneese de Mello gave us an injection of

optimism when they spoke of heroic times, times when
ideas and aims were clear. Today, we find ourselves in a
rather different situation. What are you going to do? Fight
against the engineers? Fight against the builders, or the
technical studios? Clearly, there's a kind of class struggle
going on, but that's not the problem - the problem is not
so much about professional boundaries, as the aims you're
trying to achieve. Architecture is living in a dream world.
It's quite clear that it has become obsolete, and clearer still
that all the great hopes for modern architecture have no
meaning any more.
Modernism had a goal, which was to improve the lot
of man through architecture. The Bauhaus was the most
important experiment in this regard. Perhaps many of you
are thinking of opting for industrial design. But what is
industrial design today? It is the clearest possible indictment
of the general perversity of a whole system - the system
of the west. The obsolescence of architecture, now painfully
clear, is leading to a loss of metaphors. You have to make
an effort, as Artigas and Kneese de Mello did, and r myself
did. Our dilemmas were different: as Kneese said, it was
a case of either working for the academy or working for a
new architecture. Today, this architecture no longer
promises to save mankind.
Take Wright's Fallingwater, for example. You have
to make an effort to reconstruct its real significance in the
history of modern architecture - the same applies to the
Barcelona Pavilion by Mies, or to the whole of western
architecture, for that matter, with just a few 'super-human'
91
exceptions, some lines of investigation and projects worth

pursuing. The architect has lost his bearings; he no longer
has an aim in sight. The enthusiasm for technology - that is,
for the scientific practice that informed all contemporary
architecture -has turned into technocracy, into a theory of
models that is deemed all important You can see this for
- .
yourselves in Brazil.
The great hope of modern architecture was planning
-planning on the scale of the city, region, state. The theory
of models, which is dependent on the economic system, on
a McNamara-style technocracy, has also turned architecture
and planning into technocratic, utopist, drawing-board
activities, far removed from the problems of the real world.
Paper pseudo problems are the only kind it can deal
-
with. What is happening now - and we have a very clear

illustration of this in Sao Paulo - is that architects are
becoming utterly divorced from reaJ problems. What we are
seeing is a sort of reversion to academic idealism - idealism
in the philosophical and not the domestic sense - based on
a false technology, on technocracy.
People in the west are becoming aware of this, and
beginning to take action, but problems remain. There is no
immediate solution, because before you can find a solution
you have to first put in place another type of structure
(not architecture) that changes the landscape, so to speak.
Within this changed landscape, the architect will have
to fend for himself. The idealism I was talking about is
a technocratic idealism. We can say it's 'idealism' because
it's a new - and highly dangerous - philosophy that allows
the architect to happily confine himself to certain limits,
disconnecting completely from the semiotics of reality.
Restoring the true sense, not of design, but of the plan that
addresses socioeconomic conditions, is a POLITICAL act.
Restoring a sense of social responsibility is the first
step towards achieving a clear vision that will enable us to
conserve the principles of modern architecture, which are
now in danger of sinking without trace. The future of true
planning depends on the ability to relate design to an
awareness of the reality of scientific practice. I am against
92
seeing architecture as an indicator of status. So I have

to disagree with my dear friend Kneese de Mello when
he says that builders should not do architecture. I think
that the people should do architecture. It is important
that architecture begin from the foundations, not from
the dome. Of course the architect has to act, but from
the base up.
The big danger is that there will be a revival of the
concept of crafts, similar to what's going on in the United
States and Europe. No one can go back to Ruskin and Morris.
A return to crafts and folklore is impossible, especially in
Brazil, where there's no artisanal tradition. What we do
have here is a pre-craftsmanship, not a genuine artisanal
class, as you find in Mediterranean countries.
Resolving the problem of the architect's detachment
from the reality of his country depends, first of all,
on professional training - that is, on the organisation of
schools of architecture, not just in Brazil, but throughout
the western world. The problem is one of professional
structure, because the architect has shed the role of the
individual practitioner and become instead an entrepreneur.
Architects can work very well by setting up a studio
or a number of studios at different sites, operating
collaboratively. The model of the architect working in
a co-op is perfect.
These are significant problems, particularly in Brazil,
where there is the potential to realise fantastic, wonderful
things. What we need in this country in particular is a
national plan to restructure the teaching of architecture.
l believe there would be huge support for this idea in a
country with the kind of grassroots potential that Brazil
enjoys. You could construct a line of action, a base, as
I said, by tackling head-on certain problems, among them
the current reluctance to take structural responsibility
for the work. Even if it is engineered by others, the
structure of a work of architecture has to be designed by
an architect, which means that the architect has to
be aware of the technical problems involved, and in this
regard architectural teaching has failed dismally.
93
In parallel to architecture, the problems of industrial

design are becoming impossible to ignore. Everything that
is being produced in the so-called field of industrial design
is practically useless. Basing the work on real conditions,
studying the true reality, is the solution to these difficulties.
Class problems remain very important, but there is nothing
blocking your way now, except perhaps for a structure that
goes beyond the structure of architecture, and which you
will not be able to overcome by relying solely on the means
of an arChitecture and industrial design to 'save humanity'.
AUDIENCE What measures do architects need to take

in order to achieve this conscious adjustment to reality
and the social environment?
LINA BO BARDI An awareness of a reality goes hand in

hand with a political awareness, with regard to both
economics and the architect's sense of moral responsibility.
Artigas was right when he said that Brazil's popular
roots give us the potential to delve deeply into things.
In other countries, it's incredibly difficult to get to the
bottom of things. There's a huge opportunity here, if you
look a bit more carefully, to grasp the true realities of
the nation. This is true in art, in architecture and in many
other fields.
AUDIENCE What is your opinion of the growing real

estate speculation in Sao Paulo and our city's consequent
loss of character?
LBB Real-estate speculation is primarily the consequence

of a certain economic structure, but in the case of Sao Paulo
there is also a certain omission at work- a collective
omission on the part of architects, a lack of unity, of a
common vision. Real-estate speculation in Sao Paulo has
all the characteristics of an earthquake, a natural disaster,
escaping any attempt at control. But it is vital that
architects unite and show some sort of resistance to this
commercialisation and degradation.
94
Quite apart from the problem of engineers and other

'gatecrashers' in architecture, drastic measures are required
to deal with this predatory economic organisation, which
lies beyond the architect's control. There's no master plan
for Sao Paulo, or for Brazil as a whole, or its regions, and
for this, architects, as a profession, are partly to blame.
There's no major architectural journal here, no established
channels of communication or debate for those who want
to write about architecture. Today, you have to appeal to the
hospitality of a porn magazine, or the like.
AUDIENCE How, given the kind of system that now

prevails, can we produce this base-line architecture that
responds to people's roots and needs? What channels
should be used, what means?
LBB First off, I'm not talking about a 'spontaneous'

architecture, which is the invention of an architectural
bourgeoisie. I'm talking about people's needs. People
should be able to build, and the architect has an important
role to play in making this happen. It was in this sense that
I spoke of a base-line architecture. First you have to have
a certain modesty and moderation in your goals. Then you
can set up a large technical studio (this is not absolutely
essentia 1, but it's a possibility). Brazil is a big country, you
could work through organisations. The Church, for
example, does stuff, has ongoing projects, but few people
know about them. You have to travel around Brazil, head
inland, see things, not stick to the cities.
AUDIENCE I'd like to go back to your theme of Brazil not

having a folklore. ls this just a phase we're going through,
or does it have to do with the fact that we've been
importing other nations' customs ever since the country
was discovered?
LBB I didn't say that Brazil doesn't have a folklore.

Brazil has one of richest in the world. What I said was
that Brazil doesn't have a crafts tradition, which is very
95
different. There is some confusion between the words

cra fts and folklore. Crafts depend on a well-defined
social structure. Craftsmen came to Brazil from Spain,
Italy, Portugal, but a genuine artisanal class has never
existed here.
What we have, in the Northeast, is pre-craftsmanship,
which is tightly related to folklore, but today the meanjng
of the wordfolklore, even if employed by a scientist, is
unclear. And the word craftsmanship means nothing at all.
It's a word that needs to be replaced, because it can
designate pretty much anything from tourist knjckknacks
and souvenirs to articles in a high-end shop.
First published in Arquitectura e desenvolvimento

nacional: Depoimentos de arquitetos paulistas
(Sao Paulo: IAB/PINI, 1979)
96
THE ARCHITECTURAL PROJECT (1986)
When I first entered the abandoned Pompeia Drum Works

in 1976, what piqued my curiosity - in terms of its potentia l
for transformation into a leisure centre - were the large
factory sheds arranged rationally, in line with British
models from around the mid-nineteenth century, the early
days of European industrialisation.
What really charmed me, however, was the elegant
and innovative concrete structure. Remembering fondly
the pioneer Hennebique, I then thought about the need to
preserve the work.
Thus my first encounter with this building triggered
so many recollections for me that I naturally became
passionately involved with the project.
The second time I visited was on a Saturday, and the
atmosphere was quite different. The elegant Hennebique
structure no longer felt solitary: there was a happy crowd
of infants, mothers, fathers, older people passing from
one pavilion to another. The rain was dripping through the
cracked roofs, but children were running around and boys
were playing soccer, laughing as they kicked the ball
through the puddles. A group of mothers were barbecuing
meat and making sandwiches at the entrance on Clelia
Street; close by, a puppet theatre was putting on a show for
a group of youngsters. I thought: all of this should continue
like this, with all this happiness.
I went back many times on Saturdays and Sundays,
until l had clearly fixed these joyful scenes in my mind.
This is where the story of the design for the SESC
Pompeia Cultural Centre begins. There are 'beautiful souls',
and ones that are not so beautiful. In general, the former
accomplish little, the latter more. This is the case with the
97
Sao Paulo Museum of Art. There are open societies and

closed ones: America is an open society, with its flowering
meadows and its breezes that cleanse and comfort.
And so, in an overcrowded, distressed city, a ray
of light, a freshening breeze, can suddenly arise. And there
it is today, the Pompeia Factory, with its thousands of users,
the queues in the beer lounge, the 'Indian Solarium' on the
deck, the sports block, the continuing joy of the broken
roofed factory: a little joy in a sad city.
N6 one transformed anything. We found a factory
with a very beautiful, architecturally important original
structure, and no one messed with it. . . The starting point
for the design of the SESC Pompeia Leisure Centre was
the desire to construct another reality.
We added just a few little things: a little water, a hearth.
The initial idea for the re-use of the complex was
informed by an architettura pove·ra - a poor architecture,
not in the sense of impoverished but in the artisanal sense
of achieving the maximum communication and dignity
with minimal, humble means.
After the modern movement in architecture was
cynically declared to be bankrupt - both content-wise
and in terms of its potential to help humanity - a new trend
was launched in Europe: the postmodern, which can be
defined as a retromania, a feeling of impotence in face of
the impossibility of ever getting around the disheartening
failure of one of the great projects of western civilisation.
The avant-garde in the arts continues to feed on the
leftovers of the capital it built up.
The new motto is: historical principles are there to
be consumed, sucked dry. Retromania rules in Europe
and in the United States, providing critical dispensation
for the type of architects who since the beginning of the
Industrial Revolution have catered to their well-heeled
clients with their spiritual recyclings of the past. Cornices,
portals, pediments, biforia and triforia, Roman, Gothic
and Arabic arches, columns and large and small domes
never went away, but continued to accompany - as a kind
of diminutive, discreet and baleful chorus - the courageous
98
THE ARCHITECTURAL PROJECT
march of the modern movement, brutally interrupted

by the Second World War.
It's an old story. The arches and columns of Nazi
fascism are returning. History perceived as a Monument
rather than a Document.1 Clearly Monument refers not only
to a wo rk of architecture, but also to the collective actions'
'
of great social movements.

Conclusion: we are still living under ashen postwar
skies. 'Tout est permis, Dieu n'existe pas.'2 But we cannot
doubt the existence of the war, which still continues, just
as the great resistance movements go on.
The postmodern movement, born in the United States,
came to international prominence at the last Venice Biennale;
reactionary and anti contemporary, it confuses the true
-
meaning of history with a dubious return to historicism.

A11 of this could be deemed an exaggerated premise
for the presentation of a simple theatre auditorium seat,
but l offer this warning note on European misgivings
about the postmodern in the hope that Brazil will not
blithely head off down the same path as those culturally
bankrupt societies.
With regard to this little chair, made completely
of wood and without upholstery, it should be recalled that
medieval plays were presented in public squares, with the
spectators standing up and walking about. Greco-Roman
theatres did not have upholstered seating either; the seats
were made of stone and exposed to the elements - as were
the onlookers, just as they are today n
i the stands of soccer
stadiums. Upholstered seating appeared in Europe in the
court theatres of the 1700s, and it continues to be used
today for the comfort of the Consumer Society.
The wooden seating at Pompeia is a simple attempt to
restore to the theatre its quality of 'distancing and involving',
rather than merely seating.
The presence to the rear of the factory of a subterranean
'rainwater channel' (actually the famous Aguas Pretas
riverbed) made almost all of the grounds destined for
the sports zone a no build area'. There were two patches
' -
of free land, one at the left, the other at the right, close to
99
the 'chimney-tower water-tank' - all quite complicated. But,

as the great North American architect Frank Lloyd Wright
said: 'Limitations are an architect's best friend.' Reduced
to two little patches of land, I thought about the marvellous
architecture of the military 'fortresses' dotted along the
Brazilian coast or hidden throughout the interior - in cities,
in forests, in the margins of deserts and in arid backlands.
Out of this came the two 'blocks': one for the playing courts
and pools, the other for the changing rooms. In the middle,
the empty strip. And how to join the two blocks? There
was only one solution: the 'aerial' solution, with skywalks
of prestressed concrete connecting the two blocks.
I have the same aversion to air conditining as I have
to carpets. Hence those gaping 'holes' like the openings
in prehistoric cave dwellings, with no glass, no anything.
The 'holes' allow for continual cross-ventilation.
I called the entire set 'cidadela', which means not
just 'citadel' but also 'goal' - perfect for a sports complex.
For the no-build strip I came up with a large wooden
boardwalk that runs from one side of the complex to the
other along the entire length of the 'forbidden land'. On the
right is a 'waterfall', a sort of open-air communal shower.
My good friend Eduardo Subirats, a philosopher
and a poet, said that the Pompeia complex has a powerful
expressionist tenor. It's true, and this comes from my
European education. But I never forget the surrealism
of the Brazilian people, their inventiveness, their pleasure
in getting together as a group to dance, to sing. Thus I
dedicate my work at Pompeia to the young, to the children,
and to the old. To everyone together.
Everything that highly developed western countries
- including the United States - have sought and still seek,
Brazil already has: as a minimill part of its culture.
And the people who possess this total freedom
of the body, this deinstitutionalised way of living, are the
COMMON FOLK This is just the Brazilian people's way
of being, in contrast to highly developed western countries,
where the bourgeoisie (including a certain type of
intellectual) is anxiously seeking an exit from a hypocritical
100
THE ARCHITECTURAL PROJECT
and castrated world, whose freedoms they themselves

destroyed centuries ago.
The importing, into Brazil, of this feeling of sterile
and anxious searching is a criminal act that could lead to
a sense of total castration.
In the great civilisations of the Far East, such as Japan
and China, this cultural positioning of the body (body as
'mind') coexists with physical exercise. They also coexist
in Brazil - but not in the middle class - and the real issue
is to promote a bottom-up rather than a top-down form of
consciousness.
With regard to the Pompeia complex, the sports centre
and the physical sports centre are dedicated especially
to the young people in the bakeries, butchers, grocers,
supermarkets and other stores who used to come here
and who I saw in 1976 and 1977 - and who today may be
feeling a little disappointed. For men and women there
are age limits to physical prowess. For children as well,
who can occupy from the outset the 'Lecture' area in the
NOBLE 'study' space ('noble' in the Latin sense of the word)
- a space also dedicated to parties, get-togethers and dance.
The spaces of an architectural work condition the human
being - and not the other way around - and a serious error
in defining the use of the spaces can lead to the structure's
total failure.
The huge success of this first experiment at the
Pompeia Factory clearly demonstrates the validity of the
initial 'architectural project'.
First published in Giancarlo Latorraca (ed),

Cid.adela da Liberdade (Sao Paulo: SESC 1986).
Text adapted from a translation in Drifts and
Derivations: Experiences, Journeys and Morphologies
(Madrid: Reina Sofia, 2010).
101
NOTES
I. A reference to
Michel fouc�uh:'s
comment in L'ircheotogie du uvolr
(Pa ris· Gollimard, l969), 'l'hl!to lro est
ce qui transforme des documents
en mon uments'. The true arch itect

to have been the Belgian Auguste
Perrot(1474-1954). with whom
Penteado had c:ontict in Puis.
'Everything is permitted. God does
not exist ' An illusion to the fJmous
quote In Oostoyevsky's The Brothers

Karamnov. w hich is actually
'If God does not exist. everything
11 permitted.' (Ed.J
102
INTENSIVE THERAPY (1988)
Benin House is a material documentation of Flux and Reflux,

Pierre Verger's seminal book on the African-Brazilian slave
trade of the not so distant past.
The foundation's headquarters occupy a colonial
house i n the Pelourinho, the historic centre of Salvador.
Here we inherited a heavy-handed 'structural' restoration
carried out during the previous municipal administration:
concrete columns and beams striking a discordant note
with the elegant simplicity of the original structure, which
was most likely of timber. A lovely 'rampart-style' wall
of stone and earth ran parallel to the main facade's line
of French windows. This rampart wall (covered in a crude
plaster which we soon stripped off) stopped short of the
ceiling; above it, resting on the beams and columns, a
cantilevered concrete slab supports the upper floors.
Between the slab and the rubble wall was a continuous
'strip' of blue sky. A momentary shock, followed by
Intensive Therapy:
1 The separated, isolated floors were tied together

vertically by a 'hole', an opening rising from the ground
to the top-floor ceiling.
2 The concrete columns, excessive in such a small space,

were wrapped in hand-braided straw made from coconut
palm, in the style of African basket weaving
- .
3 The means of circulation between the three floors -the

staircase that in the earlier plan took up the centre of the
ground floor - was relocated behind the 'columns' so that
it ran alongside the rubble wall, forming a continuous,
103
modern circulation path, but one that runs in a straight

line, like the continuous staircases of the colonial era.
4 The rubble wall, stripped of its plasterwork, was left

as it was, with its irregular profile, that stopped short
of the cantilevered slab: we cleaned this carefully, and set
protective glass into the subtle sliver of sky above it.
5 Access to the third and uppermost storey (containing

guest qd.arters for visitors from Africa) is via a light
metal staircase.
That's it. The exhibition of Benin craftwork will be held

in this environment. This is poor craftwork (in the more
modern sense of the word), as it is in the whole of Brazil's
Northeast - poor, but rich in fantasy and invention, speaking
of a future that is free and modern and of a country
standing at the dawn of a new civilisation where scientific
advances might live alongside the values acquired from
a history full of hardship and poetry.
First published in AU- Arquitetura e Urbanismo 18

(June-July 1988)
104
,
AN ARCHITECTURAL LESSON (1990)
This is not an article about architecture, but simply the

transcript of a lecture, so the tone is colloquial and direct.
The lecture takes as its starting point Geoffrey Scott's
book The Architecture of Humanism (1884), a set text for
a generation of European architecture students. While the
discourse today has changed, there has been a resurgence
of enthusiasm for the 'past' (witness postmodernism),
which means that it's still pertinent to talk about 'errors'
in architecture. In the debate with students (and non
students) that followed the lecture the audience was
large and the questions were intelligent.
Today we are going to talk about architecture - but not

architecture as 'construction' or 'realised fact', where we
can highlight exceptions and innovations. Instead, we're
going to talk about architectural criticism, and about
the impasse, or perhaps the dead end, in which it finds
itself. We will also speak of the education of architects in
universities, and of the popular architecture that, folklore
aside, manages to avoid all of this and represent the value
of freedom.
The writers of the great treatises had established a
'code of conduct' for the practice of architecture even before
the eighteenth century. But it was really in the eighteenth
century that the 'errors' emerged, along with 'criticism'
itself, and they continue to this day, at least in part.
One of these errors relates to Renaissance architecture,
with its references and rules (some of which are still
accepted today), which gave rise to inferiority complexes
so severe that the continuous and organic development
of architecture was hindered.
109
The second error was the romantic error, which

attempted to combat the force ofRenaissance architecture
by adopting certain influences from the Orient - such as
chinoiserie- and from gothic architecture, which was very
important at the time. On visiting Strasbourg Cathedral,
the young Goethe had an epiphany, and his praise
would unclench the process that would eventually lead
to architecture's emancipation from the Renaissance.
Another critical error, also from the nineteenth
century; was the picturesque, with its love of nature and
ties with romanticism.. Today, when you think of Frank
Lloyd Wright, you immediately make the connection
with this myth, this love of nature. However, despite a
background steeped in these 'critical errors', Frank Lloyd
Wright was a great artist. He broke free from. all the rules
to get someplace else.
John Ruskin was the first great architectural critic, in
the modern sense. His books, The Seven Lamps ofArchitecture
and The Stones of Venice, brought about a nineteenth
century revolution, with an approach that was puritan, tied
to nature but detached from the Renaissance and its rules. . .
Ruskin takes a stand against ancient architecture, the
classical architecture of Vitruvius, replacing it with the
idea of liberty. This fact gets little attention in universities
today, and not just in Brazil, but also in Europe and the
United States, where the history of architecture is presented
in a fragmentary manner.
Things are a little different in England, because it was
the great English humanists of the sixteenth century [sic]
who were responsible for 'discovering' Vitruvius. Indeed,
these English humanists, having discovered (or invented)
Vitruvius, effectively launched him and his three rules
- utilitas, firmitas, venustas. Then, in the eighteenth century,
criticism emerged, not in the form we know it, but as a set
of classical rules that were codified through books and
'erudition'. I wouldn't exactly say these rules are 'dangerous',
as Gropius thought they were, but when they're not
understood historically; they can mess up the architect's
creative formation.
110
AN ARCHITECTURAL LESSON
Moving on: the nineteenth century saw another

mechanical error -the expressing of the structural function.
The Industrial Revolution was accompanied by a tide of
enthusiasm for great iron constructions - first, the Crystal
Palace in England, and then the Halle des Machines and
Eiffel Tower in Paris, and the h uge bridges in Portugal. But
in thils wonderful modern world of ours, it is important to
cultivate a dispassionate perspective that will enable you to
weigh up, coolly, the decisions that will have an impacton
your life. This is something that could happen to you, here,
in this university: a cool freedom of choice will determine
your future as an archite ct .
Another critical error could be labelled 'biological'.
This is prevalent in Anglo-Saxon countries, especially the
Un ited States, where architecture refers to physical feelings:
the structure reflects the 'behaviour' of the building and
other physical or biological aspects. We cannot go into the
details of this here, because it would take too long.
Before the Second World War, and for a while after it,
important architecture critics continued to proceed according
to these erroneous rules, which were adopted almost
wholesale in western academia.
Today we find ourselves at an impasse. Yours is a very
'complicated' period in the history of architecture. People
don't know where to look or what to do, and they think
that eve ryth ing is allowed. So what path should you follow
when you're going to graduate in a year or two, when
you'r·e about to embark on a career in the service of society
(given that architecture, whether you like it or not, is
fundamentally a collective and socio-political art)?
My response relates to everything I have just told you:
you have to cast off the fetters, but not simply chuck out the
past and all its history. Instead, you have to approachthe
past as a historical present, as something living, something
that helps you avoid the pitfalls. I n face of the historical
present, our task is to forge a new present, a 'true' one.
More than a deep specialist knowledge, this calls for an
ability to understand the past historically, to determine
what will work in the new situations that you're confronting
IU
today - and this is something that you won't learn from

books alone.
This conclusion might not please you, but it simply
reflects my personal experience. When you design
something, even as a student, it is important to make
something that 'works', that has some connotation of use,
of function. It is essential that the design does not simply
fall out of the sky onto the heads of the 'inhabitants',
but expresses a truth, a necessity. And it also has to be
(depending on the talents of the individual) more or less
beautiful: you always have to strive for the ideal object, for
something decent, deserving of the old term 'beautiful'.
So what remains of all this critical history and its
'errors'? Vitruvius's three qualities. Three 'teeny-weeny'
rules which we unconsciously observe when designing.
Architects, past and present, have always taken these as
the basis of a training that cultivates a 'capacity to choose',
and continue to do so now.
So an awareness of the present, combined with a
dear-sighted course of action, is key to avoiding the risk of
copying others. Of course you can copy, everyone does -
especially students just starting out -but it's important to
understand that we also have the ability to create, because
there's an infinite horizon, beautiful and blue, stretching
out before us It's like standing on a mountain top and
. . .
looking out across a vast open landscape.

The American musician and poet John Cage, on a visit
to Sao Paulo, was driving down Avenida Paulista, and he
had the car stop in front of MASP. He got out and walked
from one end of the belvedere to the other, holding up his
arms and shouting: 'This is the architecture of freedom!'
The building is more usually praised as the 'world's largest
free-spanning structure supporting a flat, permanent load',
but I felt the judgement of this great artist had perhaps
captured the essence of what I wanted to say when I
designed MASP: the museum was a 'nothing', a pursuit of
freedom, a breaking down of barriers, a capacity to be free
in the face of things. But to achieve this, you have to have
a decent political, socio-economic and technical grounding,
112
so that you don't end up making compromises or following

the mistaken premises of traditional architectural criticism.
AUDIENCE One of the hallmarks ofyour work is that you

monitor progress on site, during construction. I would like
to know a little more about your way of working.
LINA BO BARDI I don't have an office to begin with.

I work on solving design problems at night, when everyone
is asleep, when the phone doesn't ring, and everything
is silent. Then I'll set up an office along with the engineers,
the technicians, the workers at the construction site. That
way you increase the experience of the work and get a total
collaboration between all these different professionals. This
also does away with that ridiculous dichotomy between
architects and engineers, and also allows you to keep track
of expenses, negotiations and any seams that might be
going on. . . The work gets done at lower cost than if you
were stowed away in an office with three secretaries, a
receptionist and a load of assistants.
Of course, you have to have draughtsmen, but I prefer
to use students and old hands to do the mechanical and
the detail drawings. In general, I don't produce that many
drawings myself, only the essential ones. Any problems are
sorted out on site, sometimes using hand-drawn sketches
to work things out, but always referring to measurements.
Measurements are essential. I'll bet your portfolios contain
very few of them, but they're not an eyesore - on the
contrary, look at the drawings of the best modern architects
past and present: they are full of notes and measurements.
GILBERTO GIL I'd like you to speak a little about the issue
of public housing and the measures taken by the state
to solve this problem. How do you see architecture in the
socialist world, in the Soviet Union, which has in recent
years produced perhaps the most planned architecture in
this sense, where design and architecture have come closest
to expressing the political will of the state?
113
LBB From an architectural point of view, the socialist

countries have shortcomings of their own. But how do you
build a genuinely socialist nation in just a few years? Many
early achievements give way to some sort of fascist-populist
experiment, rather than something genuinely socialist.
Housing is the most important issue for a country. I've
been engaged with it since university, when I joined the
Resistance and the armed struggle during the Second
World War. Our dream, the dream of the young architects,
was the Own Home Association, that is, social housing.
Our political struggle was aimed at a true national liberation,
working towards a centre-left coalition. We really believed
we would win and be able to go on working. Fat chance!
In 1946, the Christian Democrats returned to power steered
by the same old fascist personnel and I reckoned the only
thing for it was to leave, abandon the place I'd thought of
as my home. Italy still to this day hasn't solved its public
housing problem.
In fact, it's a problem that is very hard to solve in
a capitalist country, where you're dependent on getting
a mortgage from the bank, and it's not the community
or the state that is in control. It's the same with teaching:
I think that all schools in Brazil should be public and free.
J'm againstprivate schooling, and I think along the same
lines when it comes to work: on a personal level, I've done
two or three houses for friends or acquaintances. But if
someone with buckets of money comes along and asks me
to design a house for them, I turn them down. I work for
the government, I don't believe in private initiative, even
in a capitalist country: I've had my share of headaches
with that. In countries like Italy or France you can't work
for the government and have free rein. In Brazil, I've always
done what I wanted, without restrictions, even as a woman.
That's why I say I'm a Stalinist and an anti-feminist. Of
course, i f you're a woman with a little voice and not much
know-how, you're done for.
I believe Brazil has a bright social and economic
future. If the country fails, it will be your fault, and ours
too, because Brazil has everything it takes to create a great
114
'modernity'. . . Let me repeat what I've said on television:

Brazil doesn't have much of an artistic vocation, I mean for
sculpture, for example, but it has a huge talent for scientific
practice, and this is vital for modern creativity. lt's the
most advanced country in the world in this respect. And
that's not a joke. Poetry is also implicit in science, which,
for its part, is not the opposite of poetry. While much of
Brazil's sculpture is absolute dross, devoid of content, a little
scientific effort will always make an important contribution.
In Brazil, we are lucky not to have closed horizons. This is
a big country, with a population that is quite able to say 'no�
in a manner both churlish and elegant, to anything that
does not deserve to be taken seriously.
AUDIENCE Can you say something about the nationalist

strands in your work, about your interest in popular art?
LBB There is a big difference between national and

nationalist. Popular national art is the identity of a people,
of a nation. A nationalist country is fascist Italy or Franco's
Spain, for example. Nationalism is a serious mistake that
ends up confusing people, draining all meaning out of
the 'national'. You might be black, white or yellow, from the
North or the South, and be national, bringing the original
and sacred characteristics of your nation to the great
international table, and this is something to be proud of.
Nationalism is the wrong way, the way of reactionary
politics. It's the worst thing in the world, full of arrogance
and devoid of meaning. The national, on the other hand,
embraces the populace in all its manifestations. You can
work for change, maybe even with some success, as with
the Russians in 1917, but this is not the only solution. If you
know ihow, you can find other ways to assume a dignified
national position.
AUDIENCE In Brazil, the architect generally has to work

for the rich. Why not create schools in which the architect
can get closer to the other layers of the population and
therefore create conditions for more dignified housing?
115
LBB Your question is pretty, but a little nai:Ve. Architects,

like other professionals - be they doctors, engineers or
economists -are dependent on the socio-economic structure
of the nation. To change that takes a revolution and if that
doesn'thappen, we have to find a way of working within
the current set up. To fight forchange is beautiful, a worthy
cause for mankind, for a true individual. I, personally,
have never worked for the moneyed class. In fact, once it
has been restored, the Ladeira da Miseric6rdia in Bahia
will continue to house the same people as before. It won't
be turned into weekend apartments, bachelor pads or the
like - isn't that right, Mr Mayor?
AUDIENCE I'd like you to say something about your

ideas for conserving historic buildings, about your
restoration work, about the contrasts between the old
and the new.
LBB This is what I was talking about when I spoke of

the historical present. In architectural pracice,
t there is no
such thing as the past. Whatever still exists today, and has
not died, is the historical present. What you have to save
-or rather, not save, but preserve - are the typical features
and characteristics of a time that is part of our human
heritage. For example, on the Ladeira da Miseric6rdia we
preserved, in accordance with the best practices of
traditional conservation, whatever was still standing: the
windows and four walls.
But this was just a shell that needed to be filled in
with a technical and historical restoration. You can't just go
and insert columns, pillars and beams into an interior that
was originally an open, elegantly structured space. In
collaboration with the architect Joao Filgueiras Lima ('Lele')
we used premoulded elements in iron and cement - a
system derived from theferrocimento patented by the Italian
engineer Pier Luigi Nervi in 1937. We created buttresses,
as they do in earthquake zones, from external plisse walls,
which allowed us to use just brick (without reinforcing
columns or beams) to recreate the old walls.
116
In Sao Paulo when I was invited to work on Pompeia,

,
the people at SESC asked me if the old factory was

worth preserving. I looked into it and found that it was a
pione ering example of the use of reinforced concrete, the
-
Hennebique system, and that it was not only extremely rare

but in good condition, requiring no special work at the site.
We tore down the partition walls in order to free up large
poetic spaces for the community. The SESC building dates
from the turn of the century and is not listed, but it should
be. The sports component of the project was designed
from scratch, in pre-stressed concrete, with skywalks and
punched through apertures. The existing factory sheds and
-
the modern sports centre, with the water-tower, dressing

rooms and deck, were all interconnected, form ing a very
pleasing whole.
However if people thought that everything old had
to be preserved the city would soon turn into a museum
of ju nk. On an architectural restoration project you have
to be creative and rigorous in choosing what to preserve.
The result is what we call the historical present.
AUDIENCE I believe that yours is the first architecture of

Brazilian design. Are you the only Brazilian architect, the
first 'tupiniquim' architect? 1
LBB I'm not going to go into semantics, because the

di scussion is a little old hat, as well as somewhat arcane.
It would take me all night, with the support of a lecturer
from the Faculty of Philosophy, to address this subject,
and it's something that lies outside my scope of knowledge.
What I will say is that there are no 'tupiniquims', only
Brazilians. Of course, I said that Brazil is twice my country
because it was my country of choice. I was not born here,
but I chose to live here. We have no choice in birth, we are
born by chance. I chose my country .
AUDIENCE i portant for an

Do you think it is more m
architect to start a revolution through architecture or
through politics?
117
LBB They are two completely different things, but they

depend on each other. We can bring about an architectural
revolution and a political revolution at the same time.
But no one can wage a political revolution on their own
it takes a whole country, a whole people. So this choice
doesn't exist. If carried out in isolation, a revolution means
nothing at all. You can't make public housing, or collective
housing, unless there is a socio-political and economic
system to back i t up.
AUDIENCE Is there such a thing as Brazilian design?

If so, how would you describe it?
LBB With rare exceptions, I would say there's never been

such a thing as a Brazilian design. Unfortunately (or
fortunately) design has had its day. What was seen as the
means to save humanity back in the 1930s - the time of
Gropius and the Bauhaus, the time of the great architects
what was once a great Pacific Ocean has become a puddle
in a dirty pothole in the middle of the road. That's where
international design is at today: it's over, in that it's no
longer our route to salvation - no one can be saved by
design. Can a beautiful glass quench your thirst? Can a
beautiful plate or chair save us from hunger or misery,
sickness, ignorance or unemployment? This is the big flaw.
It was a beautiful dream, but just a dream.
AUDIENCE What do you think of Oscar Niemeyer's

Latin-American Memorial?
LBB l'm an unreliable witness when it comes to Oscar

Niemeyer and Ludo Costa because I've loved them since
my arrival in Brazil: I'm really very fond of them. The
memorial is a beautiful, poetic thing, the kind of thing
that has to be done. You can't just make shopping centres.
AUDIENCE This appraisal you've just made of Oscar

Niemeyer is somewhat impassioned. . .
118
LBB Impassioned criticism is the true criticism.

The other criticism, the kind that is not impassioned,
is for bureaucrats.
AUDIENCE To what extent can the authorities interfere

with the freedom to design?
LBB In a capitalist country the authorities don't give a

hoot about anything. You can do whatever you like. You
can even be more socialist in a capitalist country than
in a socialist one. But it doesn't solve anything.
AUDIENCE You produced the first and the only Brazilian

post-modern architecture, am I wrong?
LBB What? International post-modernism is the biggest

mistake in contemporary architecture.
AUDIENCE Why are you so critical of post-modernism?

Didn't you just say that we can't forget the past, but should
unite it with the present. ..
LBB Perhaps I didn't explain myself properly. I'm

mortified and beg your pardon. It was probably a mistake
to speak of the historical present. 1 am sorry.
AUDIENCE What did you feel when you saw MASP

wrapped up?
LBB I liked it so much that I asked Pietro, my husband,

the director of the museum, to leave MASP wrapped in
blue forever. It was beautiful, like one of those huge Christo
sculptures. In fact, it was wrapped up, as the law requires,
to protect passers-by from any falling hammers, pliers,
pick-axes or stones during the refurbishment work.
I'd like to speak about MASP a little, to show how
the famous free span can be considered as an aesthetic
experiment. I get embarrassed when people say that the Sao
Paulo Museum of Art has the largest free-spanning space
119
in the world! It's 8om long. I never set out to make the
largest free span in the world. It so happens that the
plot was donated on the condition that there would be
a belvedere there, with a view of downtown Sao Paulo.
If I'd done away with the belvedere and built a building
with columns the plot wouId have gone straight back
to the donor's heirs. City Hall had demolished the original
belvedere not long after Cicillo Matarazzo held the first
Sao Paulo Biennial there. I thought it was a building
of historical importance to the city. Back then, Avenida
Paulista was still lined with large gardens and the
mansions of the coffee barons. It was a really beautiful
place. But it basically did nothing more than connect a hole
(the Pacaembu valley) to a mess (Paraiso). They wanted
investment to make it somewhere important. And they
succeeded. It's a joke!
Well, one day, in the early 1950s, as I was heading
down Avenida Paulista I saw the ruins of the old belvedere.
So I went to speak to someone at City Hall, a very kind
individual, to ask what was going to be built there. The
answer: 'Ah! What Brazil really needs are public toilets!
So we're going to make two huge public toilets, one to
the left, underground, for the gents, and one to the right,
for the ladies.' That's when I decided I was going to build
a museum on that site. But I had no money, no nothing.
So I went to Edmundo Monteiro, the acting-director
at the time, and asked him to offer the firm's support for
Mayor Adhemar de Barros' presidential campaign in return
for City Hall agreeing to construct a museum building,
to be granted by concession to the Museu de Arte de Sao
Paulo, to house the largest art collection in Latin America.
Edmundo liked the idea and asked me to draw up some
plans that very night so we could go and sec the mayor
the following day. In fact, I had already been thinking
about the project. Given that the famous belvedere had
to be maintained, there could be no columns. How do you
span 8om without columns? The only way is with a large
structure. I had thought of having two porticos in reinforced
pre-stressed concrete. I made this huge drawing, i n colour,
120
very pretty, and we went to see the mayor in his office in

Ibirapuera - he was sitting between the flags of Sao Paulo
and Brazil. Exciting stuff! He agreed without even looking
at the drawing and asked us to speak with his ministers.
So we went to the Secretary of Public Works, Figueiredo
Ferraz, a great engineer and friend, and he said: 'I love it!
Architects usually make pretty drawings, but they don't
know how to design structures. This is a structure!
Congratulations! But I don't have a cent!' He called the
Finance Minister, Amador Aguiar, who confirmed that
there were indeed no funds.
Edmundo said he would try to find some way to raise
the money. When we got back to the Diarios headquarters
we were met by Pietro and Assis, recently returned from
London and looking very dapper. Edmundo came straight
out with it: 'Lina had an idea: she wants to build MASP
on the Trianon on Avenida Paulista. We spoke to Adhemar,
and he's on board. What do you think?' Assis said, 'I'll leave
it up to Bardi, the museum director'. Pietro looked at me
and said: 'It's a beautiful dream, a woman's dream. . . But
the museum has to deliver on its promise to the Armando
A!vares Penteado Foundation and transfer its collection
to the building on Rua Alagoas.'
Not long after that I was invited to found and direct
the Museum of Modern Art in Bahia and left for Salvador.
I forgot all about the matter. Two years later, Adhemar
decided to go ahead with the museum, and construction
dragged on for years, with mayor after mayor lending
support. This just shows how we have to persevere with
certain things.
AUDIENCE How would you characterise modern

Brazilian architecture?
LBB It was first rate and made a big impression on

me when I was an architecture student. In my last year
at university a book was published on great Brazilian
architecture and at that time, just after the war, it was
a beacon of light amid all the death and destruction. . .
121
STONES AGAINST DIAMONDS I
It was something marvellous. Today, for now at least,
Brazilian architecture is no more. I
i
AUDIENCE Has anyone asked your opinion on the traffic
in Sao Paulo, the Tiete River, the megalopolis?
LBB I appreciate the questions, but I really have nothing

to say! Because they don't interest me. I don't drive, [ don't
use the Tiete River and I don't know what a megalopolis is.
AUDIENCE Why did you stop teaching? l'd also like you
to speak about the trades unions and the politics of
architecture.
LBB To answer that, I'd have to still be teaching at FAU,

but they chucked me out. They didn't want me there
anymore, on Rua Maranhao. It wasn't the teaching staff,
but the people at the top. It's always the same with me.
I get kicked out as soon as the work I'm involved in is
finished. I'm used to it. If I were still there, I'd be able
to talk about what you've asked, because it takes time
to talk about this ...
AUDIENCE Where do you see architecture going?

(
LBB I'm not a futurologist, how should I know? J
J
NOTES
I. The adjective tupiniqulm is a joking.
even pejorative. way of referring
to all things authentically or
I
'homegrown' Brazilian. Derived from
the Tupiniqulmindigenous tribe,
part of the greater Tupi nation.
122
t I
• •
AFTERWORD
BY MARCELO CARVALHO FERRAZ
'When I can't build, I draw; when I can't draw, I write;

when I can't write, I talk'. With these words, Le Corbusier
left no doubt as to an architect's primary responsibility.
And throughout the history of architecture, it has been
built work that has spawned and sustained the
development of new ideas and technologies - new methods
of construction, new ways of creating spaces or living
in them. Yet, as Le Corbusier also affirms, any means of
communication - drawing, writing or talking - can
ultimately be a vehicle for construction.
Among the generation who succeeded Le Corbusier,
Lina Bo Bardi (1914-1992) was another architect who notably
built and drew and wrote. Her very first job - in the studio
of Gib Ponti in Milan (1943-46) - required her to double as
an architect and editor/illustrator for Domus, the magazine
Ponti founded. Some short while later, Bo Bardi moved
from postwar Italy to Brazil, where she soon fell in love
with the new world - with the luxuriance of nature in the
tropics and with the relaxed, slightly ingenuous approach
to life of the Brazilian people, who were, as she put it, 'not
yet contaminated by self-satisfaction and money'. 'There
are open societies and closed societies. [Latin) America is
an open society, with its flowering meadows and its wind
that cleanses, brings relief. And so in an overcrowded,
distressed city a ray oflight, a freshening breeze can
suddenly arise.'
In Sao Paulo Bo Bardi began to build - notably her
own Glass House in the Morumbi neighbourhood
but also continued to write, contributing to Brazilian
127
architecture magazines in a style and voice adapted to

a new language -simple, direct, concise and economical.
In w riting about architecture as a means of changing the
world, she even mimicked Le Corbusier's own preferred
manifesto vernacular, her new Brazilian voice resonating
with the power of a politicised plan of action, always
seeking to improve the lives and communities of the people
she found around her. 'Deep down, I see architecture
as a collective enterprise, like poetry. It has nothing to
do with/'art", but is a sort of alliance between "duty" and
"scientific practice". It's a hard path to follow, but it's the
path of architecture.' (A line that as much as Le Corbusier
has echoes of Alvar Aalto's model of the 'architect is
a civil servant'.)
But in opposition to the universalising,
internationalist ambitions of her modernist architectural
forebears, Una's own sensibilities were always focused
on the importance of an architecture that could reflect and
express the idiosyncrasies and particularities of a distinct
local cu lture. 'Each country has its own way of approaching
not only a rd1itectu re but all forms of human life. ! believe
in international solidarity, in a concert of all the individual
voices. But it makes no sense to speak of a common
language shared by all - each people has its own roots,
which are always unique, and have to be explored. The
reality on the banks of the San Francisco River [in northeast
Brazil] is different from the one you find along the River
Tiete (in Sao Paulo state) . . . And this reality is every bit
as important as the reality that gave rise to Altar Aalto or
the traditions of Japan. Not in a folkloric sense, but in a
structural sense.'
Bo Bardi's experience of the old world meshed with
the exuberant reality of the new world in the Sao Paulo
Museum of Art (MASP), where she pushed to their limits
the experiments of many of her Italian colleagues, such
as Ponti and Carlo Scarpa, in the process freeing the works
of art from the walls. In particular, the display system
at MASP, where glass easels were used as supports for the
paintings, was startlingly original. The transparency of
128
AFTERWORD
the easels made the paintings seem to float in space,

setting up a dialogue with each other and with the visitors.
A project as bold as this - as Bo Bardi herself said - could
only have happened in the Americas, far away from the
musty norms of the Beaux-Arts academies of the old world.
In the Americas, everything could be done, invented, free
of the 'weight and the fetters of the past'.
Unburdened, but as provocative as ever, Bo Bardi
rejected the hegemony - or the mystification - of the
architectural drawing as the ultimate form of self
expression. She claimed that she could produce a project
purely in writing and have it built. And we, her assistants,
saw this principle in action in the competition for the
Brazillan Pavilion in Seville in 1991. Lina, already ill by this
stage, dictated our every step (drawings and texts) without
once picking up a pencil or a sheet of paper. For her the
project was a kind of literary perambulation. 'I never look
for beauty, only poetry', was her mantra. Lina wanted to
create poetry using the tools of the architect. And that's
precisely what she did.
129
I
I
IMAGE LIST
17' Rio, 1947 ' 73 Drawing by Lina Bo Bardi

18 Mirante das Artes, Etc, 74-75 Mechanised
January-February, 1967 Landscape, drawing by
19 Cronicas, 12 October Lina Bo Bardi
1958 76 Paisagem (Landscape),
20 Habitat 10, drawing by Lina Bo Bardi
January-March, 1953 105 Lina Bo Bardi sketching
31 FamiLy Portrait, at the Enkaku temple,
drawing by Lina Bo Bardi Kamakura, Japan l978
32-33 Lina Bo Bardi, MASP 106-107 Lina Bo Bardi at
- Museu de Arte de Sao the Glass House, 1978,
Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, photo R.omulo Fialdini
drawing [study for the 108 Lina Bo Bardi and
occupation of the belvedere, Pierre Verger in their
featuring an exhibition home in Benin
of children's toys] 123 SESC-Pompeia,
34 Lina Bo Bardi, Sao Paulo, 1977-86
SESC-Pompeia, study for ® lnigo Bujedo Aguirre
a canteen, 1977 124-125 Greg6rio de Mattos
45 Lina Bo Bardi with Saul Theatre, Salvador (Bahia),
Steinberg and his wife Edda 1986 ® liiigo Bujedo Aguirre
Sterne, R.io de Janeiro, 1952 126 Oficina Theathre,
46-47 Lina Bo Bardi at Sao Paulo, 1980-91
the Glass House, November ® liiigo Bujedo Aguirre
1952, photo Francisco 130 MASP, exhibitors in
Albuquerque the gallery, 1957-58,
48 Lina Bo Bardi at a photo A/E Agencia Estado
carnival ball at lAC in a
necklace of aquamarines All images except otherwise
designed by her, Siio Paulo, credited ® lnstituto Lina Bo
1948 and P M Bardi
131
Architecture Words 1 2
Stones Against Diamonds
Lina Bo Bardi
Translated from the Portugese by Anthony Doyle and

Pamela Johnston from the anthology, Lina por Escrito,
published by Cosca Naify, 2009
Series Editor: Brett Steele
AA Managing Editor: Thomas Weaver

AA Publications Editor: Pamela Johnston
AA Art Director: Zak Kyes
Design: Claire McManus
Series Design: Way ne Daly, Zak Kyes
Editorial Assistants: Ana Araujo, Clare Barrett
Set in P22 Underground Pro and Palatine
Printed in Belgium by Die Keure
ISBN 978-1 -907896-20-0
© 2 0 1 3 Architectural Association and the

Authors. No part of this b o o k may be reproduced
in any manner whatsoeverwithout written
permission from the publisher, except in the
context of reviews.
first published by the Architectural Association

in 2013. Reprinted in 2017
For a catalogue of AA Publications visit

aaschool.ac.uk/publications
or email publications@aaschool.ac.uk
AA Publications
36 Bedford Square, London W C I B 3ES
T + 44(0)20 7887 4021 F + 44(0)20 74140783

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ARCHITECTURE WORDS 12

STONES AGAINST DIAMONDS

This anthology provides a first-ever English compilation

dangerously) to the so-called "modern"- modernism as

Brett Steele, Series Editor, Architecture Words

Architecture Wo-rds is a series of texts and important

3. INTRODUCTION: SILVANA RUBINO

THE ITALIAN YEARS

21. ARCHITECTURE AND NATURE

27. THE DESIGN OF INTERIORS

35. STONES AGAINST DIAMONDS

37. BEAUTIFUL CHILD

39. TWO BUILDINGS BY OSCAR NIEMEYER

41. WINDOW DISPLAYS

43. HOUSE IN MORUMBI

49. THEORY AND PHILOSOPHY

54. CULTURE AND NON-CULTURE

57. ARCHITECTURE OR ARCHITECTURE

59. HOUSES OR MUSEUMS?

64. THE MOON

66. INDUSTRIAL ART

68. TECHNOLOGY AND ART

BACK IN SAO PAULO

77. WHAT'S HAPPENING AFTER CORBU?

81. THE NEW TRIANON

86. 'DESIGN' AT AN IMPASSE

91. ARCHITECTURE AND TECHNOLOGY

97. THE ARCHITECTURAL PROJECT

1 03. INTENSIVE THERAPY

INTERVIEWS, SPOKEN WORD

109. AN ARCHITECTURAL LESSON

When the Almirante Jaceguay made port in Rio de Janeiro

One of the art world's self-made men, an art critic and a

century was carried out i n print. As we can see from two

architects and other professionals, and between architects

what should have no place in it.3

between the wishes of the end-user and the grand vision

about a secon d symbolic revolutio n in the architecture

The experience of Lina Bo Bardi falls within this

for those born a little later was quite different. By the

the capital of the recently unified nation and moved to the

There w as also A, later renamed A- Cultura del/a V ita, a

very beginning Habitat w as part of the tripartite structure

Lina's first a rt ic les represent a theme that would

Lina taught the lay reader how to arrange and furnish

van Eyck. This generational affinity makes her an indirect

a politicisation of her discourse during a period in which

Also in Habitat, the design and construction of the

Lina lived in Bahia between 1958 and 1964- a period

She praised Brasilia as the city that elevated Brazil above

NOTES 5. 'Una Bo 8ardl: un archltetto in

2. 'The principal aim IS a manifesto' was sempltce (Rome: Fondazione

le Corbusier's reply to accusations 8runo Zevl, 2007). 12.

that his P lan Voisin would unleash .

(Lo nd on and New York: Campelto's Master's dissertation,

WW Norton, 1990). 72. 'Lina Bo Bardl: as moradas da alma'

3. Maga li Sarfatti-larson. Behind t h e (EESC-USP, 1997).

Postmodern Fa((ade: Architectural

Change in Late Twentieth­

Change in Late Twentieth

and ready feel. Alongside the cabin, two stone markers

newly developed industrial materials -should be accompa