Lina Bo Bardi is was an Italian-Brazilian Architect who made some remarkable buildings in Sao Paol0. I think she managed to build in pure forms really monumental buildings adapted to human size. They relate to the Brazilian urban architecture by there raw, brutalistic appearance but are beautiful in a very subtile way. In the CESC-building she used color in a strategic way to nuance the rawness of concrete. The windows seem to be really sensitive while they have weird forms an seem to be cut out of hard cold concrete.
Doing so I think she managed to use monumentality of forms and material to give the building meaning. People recognize the shape and relate urban activity to its architecture. This is how monumentality should be used nowadays!
This video is a short impression of the CESC. I dont know exactly what this building is for, but there are public sports-fascilities and college rooms or something like that.
Lina Bo Bardi / SESC Pompéia from 0300TV on Vimeo.
This image is of the Sao Paulo Museum of Art (MASP). I don't know anything about the interior or the museum itself but the space she created by a span of 70 meters is a well know public interior in Sao Paolo. This building is by its size and mighty span a monument. It offers a very humble but much used public space.
Very nice post Willem-Jan. I consider Bo Bardi as one of the most underestimated architects of the 20th century. They way she dealt with monumentality and the human scale is really remarkable. Also the villa's she build are very special; some of them almost Gaudi-like, but rooted in a very modernistic "tradition".
ReplyDeleteFor myself the MASP is one of the best urban buildings of the past century, mainly because it provides space, rather than taking space. That is a very powerful achievement.