Reframing Lina Bo Bardi

Reframing Lina Bo Bardi: Architecture as an Expanded Field offers a compelling and rigorous re-examination of one of the most influential architects of the twentieth century. Born in Italy, and later naturalized in Brazil, Lina Bo Bardi pursued an interdisciplinary practice that traversed architecture, design, journalism, museology, education, and political engagement. While her work has long circulated within specialist debates, it has only recently received the sustained critical attention it warrants.

This edited volume brings together an international range of contributors from diverse intellectual contexts to situate Bo Bardi’s work within broader cultural, intellectual, and historical frameworks. Organized into four sections and thirteen chapters, it traces key moments in her trajectory, from her formative years in Italy to her radical reconfigurations of architectural practice in São Paulo and Bahia. Across these contexts, the book returns to key concerns in her work: her experimental curatorial strategies, her personal and professional partnership with Pietro Maria Bardi, and her negotiation between modernism’s canonical doctrines, vernacular cultures, and environmental considerations. Rather than treating these as separate themes, the volume reads them as interconnected aspects of her architectural thinking and practice.

By interweaving these dimensions, Reframing Lina Bo Bardi offers a nuanced and multifaceted account of her enduring impact on architecture, urbanism, design, and cultural production. It stands as an essential reference for scholars and students of architecture, urbanism, art history, and design, as well as for readers interested in the intersections between architecture, culture, and politics.