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Lina Bo Bardi, an independent woman

April 09, 2026

Lina Bo Bardi, an independent woman

There were not many women at all with degrees in Architecture in the Thirties, and Lina Bo was one of these few to dare to enter this completely male-dominated profession. She graduated from the La Sapienza university in Rome in 1939, and a year later found herself in Milan, where she met two men who would play a fundamental role: Gio Ponti, one of the most important architects of the period, with whom she briefly collaborated, and Pietro Maria Bardi, a renowned critic and art collector, whose second wife she became after the war. Hers is a rare case of a woman whose fame outshone that of her husband, and Lina Bo Bardi came to be recognised as one of the most important architects of the 1900s.

Lina is a multifaceted architect. Following a period working in Ponti’s firm, she founded her own studio, which was bombed in 1943; she wrote and drew for a number of magazines and served as deputy director of Domus alongside Carlo Pagani in 1944. It is obviously impossible to build during a war, but it is possible to imagine forms of living and design the future.

Domus 1083, ottobre 2023. Courtesy of Archivio Domus – © Editoriale Domus S.p.A.

A journey throughout Italy in the wake of the armistice with her friend and colleague Carlo Pagani and the photographer Federico Patellani - who documented the devastation of the war - left a profound mark. The idea to found a new magazine may have been spawned earlier, during the war, driven by the desire of young and active thinkers to do something for the country, but it came to fruition in 1946, and was published by Gianni Mazzocchi, the editor of Domus. It lasted for just nine issues: A — Attualità, Architettura, Abitazione, Arte was the utopian vision of a small group of intellectuals. At the end of 1946, Lina moved to Brazil, where her career in architecture took shape, together with her professional and personal relationship with Pietro Maria Bardi.

Domus 152-8-1940-p.30-31, Courtesy of Archivio Domus – © Editoriale Domus S.p.A.
Italy entered the war on 10 June 1940, and in August Domus published an issue dedicated entirely to seaside homes.

The Casa de Vidro, 1951, which the architect designed for herself and her husband in São Paulo, is seen as a project that embraces both her Italian roots and the life and architecture of Brazil. She also designed one of her iconic items of furniture for the house, the Bowl Chair, an enveloping and attractive armchair in leather on slender metal legs. The house was published in Domus in 1953, accompanied by a glowing review by Gio Ponti.

Domus 279-2-1953-p.20-21, Courtesy of Archivio Domus – © Editoriale Domus S.p.A.

Gio Ponti wrote of Casa de Vidro in 1953 “It is a unique, new, isolated, inimitable work that, at the same time, can teach us so much. […] This overall result of completeness and resolution, devoid of omissions, is a lesson in architecture that validates a work that we admire.”

The move to Brazil was the result of what one could consider the “opportunity of a lifetime” for both. Bardi had been called on by the entrepreneur and art collector Chateaubriand to found and direct the new São Paulo Museum of Modern Art; the project was assigned to Lina, who designed a Brutalist building, completed in 1968, and devised a model layout with the works - paintings included - positioned within the space on dedicated frames that she designed. Visitors walked among the paintings and sculptures, enjoying a direct and open relationship with the works: this was an expression of the democratic concept of art and architecture that was to characterise all her work.

Domus 999-2-2016-p.86-87, Courtesy of Archivio Domus – © Editoriale Domus S.p.A.

The reconstruction of the original layout by Lina Bo Bardi at the MAST in São Paulo, which was taken down in 1968, represents the idea of a space that allows the unhindered enjoyment of the works of art.

Curated by Domus - ©Editoriale Domus S.p.A.

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