OLIVIA DE OLIVEIRA

Lina Bo Bardi, arquitecta nacida en Roma en 1914, emigró a Brasil en 1946, país que adoptó como suyo y donde desarrolló su carrera profesional. Con un enfoque radical y moderno, todo su trabajo está impregnado de una voluntad de acercamiento al modo de vida popular y a las tradiciones locales, eliminando las distancias entre la 'cultura de elite' y la 'cultura popular'. Sus proyectos poseen una rotundidad conceptual, material y etica que se manifiesta especialmente en su obra construida, toda ella recogida en este volumen y fotografiada especialmente para esta publicacion por Nelson Kon. Olivia de Oliveira, editora invitada, nos introduce en la obra de Lina Bo Bardi a traves de un discurso poliedrico que permitecontextualizarla y entenderla en toda su complejidad arquitectonica, cultural, politica y social. Esta publicacion, una reedicion de la revista 2G Lina Bo Bardi, culmina con una entrevista a Bo Bardi en 1991 y con una seleccion de textos de la arquitecta.

Lina Bo Bardi, the Rome-born architect, emigrated after World War Two to Brazil, a country where she undertook her professional career. The outcome of her personal experience and of a wish to get closer to the culture and ways of life of the people, Bo Bardi?s creativity moved in the direction of an architecture that prized simplicity, spontaneity, the residual and the ephem-eral; an architecture understood as 'an organism suitable for life' which incorporated everydayness and the energy of the people who use it. As a result she used the word ?substances?, rather than ?materials?, to explain what her architecture was made of. These substances are air, light, nature and art, to which the author, Olivia de Oliveira, adds time. The work of Lina Bo Bardi, then, is presented here via a huge array of previously unpublished drawings, images, writings and projects that enable the reader to grasp in a kaleidoscopic way the power and current importance of her architecture as a critical confrontation with established reality.