The architect weaving the city: Lina Bo Bardi's praxis in the SESC Pompeia

Abstract

If you hold a stone, hold it in your hand, if you feel the weight,you will never be late to understand. (Caetano Veloso)

Today we understand cities as heterogeneous spaces continuously reconfigured by multiple actors, be it urban planners, citizens with their everyday practices, and cultural agents. On a micro level the same could be said about specific elements of the city: monuments, buildings, squares, and houses. This paper is inserted in this conversation on the ways the city is woven, by analyzing the relationship between different factors and actors in the work of the Italian naturalized Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi. In particular, I focus on her project for the SESC Pompeia Recreational Center (1977-86), her writings on architecture, and her ties to Antonio Gramsci’s political thought to examine how her interest in both Italian and Brazilian popular houses shaped her practice as an architect as well as the entrance of vernacular elements in Brazilian architecture. Thus, I argue that her attention to transnational vernacular forms was instrumental in creating a personal style, but also in fashioning a role for the architect as actor of social change.