Design for living

Achillina Bo, as she was named, was born in Rome in 1914 and, after her studies, went to work in Milan under Gio Ponti – an architect and designer who also founded the noted magazine Domus, which she went on to edit. (It’s still in print, and recently published a killer photo series from her Teatro Oficina in S?o Paulo.) In 1947, when her husband Pietro Bardi was invited to found a new art museum in Brazil, the couple relocated to S?o Paulo. One of her first projects in Brazil was her own home, the Casa de Vidro (Glass House), in the then-suburban, now-tower-ringed neighborhood of Morumbi: an exquisitely harmonious insertion of a transparent box on stilts into lush Brazilian vegetation. International and local, urban and tropical, Bo Bardi’s Glass House bears the hallmarks of Italian rationalism – the industrial materials; the simple, repeated forms – but also incorporates elements of traditional Brazilian rural architecture, such as two squat, solid volumes that support the glass box from the back.

Casa da Vidro (Thiago Esperandio/Ministério da Cultura/ CC BY 2.0)
The Glass House was a precursor to her most important mid-century project: a permanent home for the Museu de Arte de S?o Paulo, which her husband had been directing from a temporary space in a newspaper office. The MASP was meant to express Brazil’s ascent on the international stage – as well as the ascent of wealthy, cosmopolitan S?o Paulo against its traditional rival, Rio de Janeiro – and Bo Bardi proposed a daring, iconic building worthy of the job. On a prime lot on Avenida Paulista, the museum comprises a hulking concrete and glass box suspended eight metres off the ground, held in place by bright red pillars and creating beneath it a public gathering space. She described it as her “fixed tropical greenhouse,” and today paulistanos still relax, gossip, skateboard, and occasionally protest under its canopy Natalie Portman Star Style Agility is key diverse information flying Bars with music so loud vivant writing solid colored pen Paris sur glace .