page_title: Lina Bo Bardi
section_title: The Glass House
hierarchical_section_title: Lina Bo Bardi / Career in Brazil / The Glass House
caption_attribution_description: Português: Casa de Vidro, marco da arquitetura de São Paulo, projetada pela arquiteta Lina Bo Bardi. Foto: Thiago Esperandio/Ministério da Cultura
context_page_description: Lina Bo Bardi, born Achillina Bo, was an Italian-born Brazilian modernist architect. A prolific architect and designer, she devoted her working life, most of it spent in Brazil, to promoting the social and cultural potential of architecture and design. While she studied under radical Italian architects, she quickly became intrigued with Brazilian vernacular design and how it could influence a modern Brazilian architecture. During her lifetime it was difficult to be accepted among the local Brazilian architects, because she was both a "foreigner" and a woman.
  She is recognizable for the unique style of the many architectural illustrations she created over her lifetime, along with her tendency to leave poignant notes to herself. She is also known for her furniture and jewelry designs. The popularity of her works has increased since 2008, when a 1993 catalog of her works was republished. A number of her product designs are being revived, and exhibitions such as her 1968 exhibition of glass and concrete easels have been recreated.
context_section_description: In 1951 Bo Bardi designed the "Casa de Vidro" (“Glass House”) to live with her husband in what was then the remnants of the Mata Atlantica, the original rain forest surrounding São Paulo. The structure is an early example of reinforced concrete in domestic architecture. Located on a 7,000-square-metre plot of land, it was the first residence in the Morumbi neighbourhood. The area is now the wealthy suburb of Morumbi but a more domesticated version of the rain forest has since re-established itself around the house, concealing it from view.
  This building was Bo Bardi's first attempt at finding a Brazilian language for the Italian modernism that she had been trained in. She also drew from other American modernist works, such as Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House and Case Study House No. 8 by Charles and Ray Eames, both of which were widely publicized at the time. It also could have been influenced by Bernard Rudofsky's courtyard houses featured in the Brazil Builds exposition (1940-1942).  However, she wanted to contextualize this modernism into the fabric of Brazil. Rather than copying the local forms, she hoped to incorporate the ideas behind them into the design in a way that was modern, and she celebrated the local environment.
  The main part of the house is horizontal between thin reinforced concrete slabs with slender circular columns. The columns are pilotis, which allows the landscape to flow under the building. Inside, the main living area is almost completely open, except for a courtyard that allows the trees in the garden below to grow up into the heart of the house. In the house, there are zones allocated to different functions- a dining room, a library, and a sitting area around the freestanding fireplace- but all are unified by the forest views through the glass. In theory, the glass panels slide open horizontally, but there is no balcony to encourage people to go outside.
  The living area is only half of the house. The other half sits on solid ground at the top of the hill, on the north side of the living room. A row of bedrooms face a narrow courtyard, on the other side of which is the blank wall of the staff wing. Only the kitchen crosses the divide - a territory shared by servants and mistress, and equipped with a variety of well-designed labor-saving devices.
caption: Casa de Vidro
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