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during the tense first months of the Great
War (WWI). She attended University College
of Architecture in Rome, one of the few
women to do so, and graduated in 1939—at
the start of yet another global conflict. During
WWII she headed north to Milan with fellow
architect Carlo Pagani, together founding
Bo e Pagani studio and collaborating on
projects for Italian architects of the day, Gio
Ponti among them.
During this time Lina donned more
professional hats—as a writer, illustrator
and an editor for Italian periodicals, and
even co-founded a few of her own. One
of these was "A," which stood for Attualità,
Architettura, Abitazione, Arte. The tagline
was Possiamo vivere meglio, or We can live
better.
How we could live better was the singular
premise of her work, as was the idea of
integrating the past into the present. Her
emphasis on the historical present was
no doubt shaped by her time touring her
native Italy after WWII. She traveled with a
photographer and a journalist, documenting
the details of the destruction, and proposed
ways that buildings and monuments could
be rebuilt. Preservation for Lina was all about
remembering the past, while being very
conscious of its place in the current moment.
In 1946 she left Italy, permanently relocating
to Brazil with her new spouse, the 14-years-
older Pietro Maria Bardi, an art dealer and
critic, writer and editor. It was in Brazil, her
adopted and cherished homeland, that the
architect, now Lina Bo Bardi, would make
her mark, creating some of the nation's most
high-profile cultural institutions. São Paulo
Museum of Art. SESC Pompéia. Teatro
"The new Brazilian
architecture has many
flaws," Bo Bardi wrote in
1951. "It is young, it hasn't
had much time to stop
and reflect, but came into
being all of a sudden, as a
beautiful child."
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