Lina Bo Bardi in Dialogue with Frida Escobedo: A Spontaneous Entanglement

ABSTRACT

In 2020, Mexican architect Frida Escobedo (1979–) designed the exhibition “Lina Bo Bardi: Habitat” at Museo Jumex in Mexico City. Lina Bo Bardi (1914–92) was an Italian émigré who became one of Brazil’s most important — and few female — modernist architects. Escobedo, too, is one of few Latin American women architects whose work is recognised internationally. Using the exhibition as touchpoint, this paper recontextualises the work and archives of Lina Bo Bardi through the lens of Frida Escobedo’s current practice, revealing the socially engaged and spontaneously playful artistry of each. Whereas Bo Bardi is prescient and forward-looking, Escobedo sensitively and inventively references her predecessor. By way of interview analysis, each architect’s praxis will be discussed as a transnational entanglement of objects, curation, persona, text, user, city, and building. Drawing on Olivia De Oliveira’s 1991 interview with Bo Bardi and the author’s 2021 interview with Escobedo, the former’s pioneering of adaptive reuse and urban revitalisation, as well as the latter’s continuation of these methods and preoccupation with ruins, will be addressed. Such topics are salient as Bo Bardi’s buildings today face material decline due to bureaucracy and neglect. A central aim of this paper is therefore to salvage and engage with the residues of Bo Bardi’s departed yet potent voice whilst simultaneously highlighting the contemporary importance of her legacy. The foregrounding of not only Bo Bardi and Escobedo’s voices but also, by default, the voices of their interviewers — Olivia De Oliveira and the author of this paper — is motivated by an enthusiasm to contribute to the collective transformation of the broader gendered communication terrain.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Lina Bo Bardi, “Culture and Non-culture (1958),” in Stones Against Diamonds: Lina Bo Bardi, ed. Brett Steele (Belgium: Die Keure, 2013), 43.

2. In 2018, Escobedo became one of two sole women practitioners to have ever designed a prestigious Serpentine Pavilion, the other being Zaha Hadid.

3. This imperative is informed by Pamela Zapata-Sepúlveda, Phiona Stanley, Mirliana Ramírez-Pereira and Michelle Espinoza-Lobos, “The traveling researchers sisterhood: four female voices from Latin America in a collaborative autoethnography,” Qualitative Research Journal 16, no. 3 (2016): 251.

4. Frida Escobedo, interview by Michaela Prunotto, “Entangling Fire, Bones and Fragments,” Inflection 8, ed. Michaela Prunotto, Kate Donaldson and Manning McBride (Melbourne: Melbourne Books, 2021), 16.

5. Escobedo, interview by Prunotto, 16.

6. Although, their similarities have been verbally mentioned by Mohsen Mostafavi. Serpentine Galleries, “Serpentine Architecture: Frida Escobedo in conversation,” 2018, video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoytqQy9rJ0.

7. Akane Kanai, Gender and Relatability in Digital Culture: Managing Affect, Intimacy and Value (Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 3–4.

8. Luisa Passerini, “Response on Borders, Conflict Zones, and Memory,” Women’s History Review 25, no. 3, (2016): 454–455.

9. Janina Gosseye, Naomi Stead and Deborah van der Plaat, Speaking of Buildings: Oral History in Architectural Research (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2019), 26.

10. Luisa Passerini, “Work Ideology and Consensus under Italian Fascism,” History Workshop 8 (1979): 85.

11. Passerini, “Work Ideology,” 85.

12. See footnote no. 34 in Jane Hall, “Spaces of Transcultural Resistance: alterity in the design practices of Lina Bo Bardi and Alison and Peter Smithson,” (PhD diss., Royal College of Art, 2018), 23.

13. Janina Gosseye, “A Short History of Silence: the epistemological politics of architectural historiography,” in Speaking of Buildings: Oral History in Architectural Research, ed. Janina Gosseye, Naomi Stead and Deborah van der Plaat (Belgium: Die Keure, 2013), 19.

14. Gosseye, “A Short History,” 19.

15. Ceren Kürüm, “At the Threshold of Moral Doors: crossing into rural Turkish Cypriot women’s spaces,” in Speaking of Buildings: Oral History in Architectural Research, ed. Janina Gosseye, Naomi Stead and Deborah van der Plaat (Belgium: Die Keure, 2013), 203.

16. Alessandra Prunotto, “The Things We Leave Behind,” The Nillumbik Prize for Contemporary Writing Anthology (Melbourne: Nillumbik Shire Council, 2020), 16.

17. Lina Bo Bardi, interview by Olivia De Oliveira, “Interview with Lina Bo Bardi,” in Lina Bo Bardi: Obra Construida, ed. Olivia De Oliveira (Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 2002), 230.

18. Luisa Passerini, Donna Gabaccia and Franca Iacovetta, “Bodies Across Borders. Oral And Visual Memory in Europe and Beyond (BABE): a conversation with Luisa Passerini, Donna Gabaccia, and Franca Iacovetta,” Women’s History Review 25, no. 3 (2016): 461.

19. See Robert Proctor, “The Architect’s Intention: Interpreting Post-War Modernism through the Architect Interview,” Journal of Design History 19, no. 4, (2006): 295–296.

20. See Proctor, “The Architect’s Intention,” 296.

21. Silvana Rubino, “Introduction,” in Stones Against Diamonds: Lina Bo Bardi, ed. Brett Steele (Belgium: Die Keure, 2013), 4.

22. Bo Bardi, interview by De Oliveira, 241.

23. Bo Bardi, interview by De Oliveira, 241.

24. Proctor, “The Architect’s Intention,” 296.

25. Bo Bardi, interview by De Oliveira, 239.

26. Bo Bardi, interview by De Oliveira, 231–233.

27. Frida Escobedo, interview by Su Wu, “Frida Escobedo,” Apiece Apart Woman, published 2018, https://www.apieceapart.com/frida-escobedo-apiece-apart-woman.

28. Escobedo, interview by Prunotto, 16.

29. Bo Bardi, interview by De Oliveira, 253.

30. Rowan Moore, “Lina Bo Bardi (1914–1992),” The Architectural Review, published July 2012, https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/reputations/lina-bo-bardi-1914-1992.

31. Edith Farnsworth quoted in Joseph A. Barry, “Report on the American Battle Between Good and Bad Modern Houses,” House Beautiful, 95 (May 1953): 270.

32. Alice T. Friedman, Women and the Making of the Modern House (New York: Harry N. Abrams Inc., 1998).

33. Friedman, Women and the Making, 142.

34. In addition to a series of enclosed segretto spaces for the housemaids, beyond. See Silvana Rubino, “Maid Rooms and Laundry Sinks Matter: Modern Houses in a Non-modern Context,” La Casa: Espacios Domésticos Modos De Habitar (Spain: Universidad De Granada, 2019), 1676.

35. Moore, “Lina Bo Bardi.”

36. Bo Bardi, interview by De Oliveira, 230.

37. Lina Bo Bardi, “House in Morumbi (1953),” in Stones Against Diamonds: Lina Bo Bardi, ed. Brett Steele (Belgium: Die Keure, 2013), 43.

38. Jane Hall, “Spaces of Transcultural Resistance: alterity in the design practices of Lina Bo Bardi and Alison and Peter Smithson” (PhD diss., Royal College of Art, 2018), 140–141.

39. Hall, “Spaces of Transcultural Resistance,” 141.

40. Göran Therborn, “Entangled Modernities,” European Journal of Social Theory 6, no. 3 (2003): 293.

41. Nora Enriquez quoted in Sandra Vivanco, “Latin America: A New Generation of Women Architects,” Places Journal, September 2012. Accessed 19 December 2021. https://doi.org/10.22269/120914.

42. It is important to note that although these women are perhaps representative of the first generation of influential women architects in Latin America, they certainly do not constitute the only women of this ilk.

43. Frida Escobedo, interview by Ronna Gardner, “Architecture is forever unfinished,” Journal of Visual Culture 20, no. 1 (2021): 48–49.

44. Escobedo, interview by Gardner, 49.

45. Escobedo, interview by Prunotto, 22.

46. Escobedo, interview by Prunotto, 15.

47. Escobedo, interview by Prunotto, 15.

48. Termed the “lightbulb of Nordeste” as per the Instituto Bardi archives.

49. Escobedo, interview by Prunotto, 16.

50. Escobedo, interview by Prunotto, 16.

51. Escobedo, interview by Prunotto, 16.

52. Escobedo, interview by Prunotto, 16, 19.

53. Escobedo, interview by Prunotto, 19.

54. Steffan Lehmann, “An environmental and social approach in the modern architecture of Brazil: The work of Lina Bo Bardi,” City, Culture and Society 7 (2016): 183–184.

55. Lehmann, “An environmental and social approach,” 184.

56. Bo Bardi, interview by De Oliveira, 240.

57. Sol Camacho, “Retrospective: Lina Bo Bardi,” The Architectural Review, published January 2020, https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/retrospective/retrospective-lina-bo-bardi.

58. Camacho, “Retrospective.”

59. Escobedo, interview by Prunotto, 16.

60. Lina Bo Bardi, “An Architectural Lesson (1990),” in Stones Against Diamonds: Lina Bo Bardi, ed. Brett Steele (Belgium: Die Keure, 2013), 117.

61. Lina Bo Bardi, “The Architectural Project (1986),” in Stones Against Diamonds: Lina Bo Bardi, ed. Brett Steele (Belgium: Die Keure, 2013), 98.

62. Escobedo, interview by Prunotto, 15.

63. Lehmann, “An environmental and social approach,” 183.

64. Olivia De Oliveira, “Ladeira da Misericórdia,” in Lina Bo Bardi: Obra Construida, ed. Olivia De Oliveira (Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 2002), 151.

65. De Oliveira, “Ladeira da Misericórdia,” 151.

66. Bo Bardi, “An Architectural Lesson (1990),” 116.

67. De Oliveira, “Ladeira da Misericórdia,” Lina Bo Bardi, 151.

68. Nick Compton, “Screen idol: Artist Isaac Julien bends time and space to celebrate Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi on film,” Wallpaper Magazine, June 2019, https://www.wallpaper.com/art/isaac-julien-lina-bo-bardi-on-film-victoria-miro-london.

69. Bo Bardi, interview by De Oliveira, 253.

70. Beatrice A. Vivio, “Transparent Restorations: How Franco Minissi Has Visually Connected Multiple Scales of Heritage,” Future Anterior: Journal of Historic Preservation, History, Theory, and Criticism 11, no. 2 (2014): 1.

71. Bo Bardi, interview by De Oliveira, 251.

72. Marcelo Carvalho Ferraz, “Afterword,” in Stones Against Diamonds: Lina Bo Bardi, ed. Brett Steele (Belgium: Die Keure, 2013), 129.

73. Claudia Suller Cornejo, “La Arquitectura Sensorial de Frida Escobedo,” (Trabajo Final de Grado, Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura De Valencia, 2018–19), 3.

74. Escobedo, interview by Prunotto, 15.

75. Escobedo, interview by Prunotto, 19.

76. Escobedo, interview by Prunotto, 19.

77. Carla Juaçaba, interview by Karen Wong, “Interview with Carla Juaçaba, Brazilian Architect and Former Pianist,” PIN-UP, 2015 https://pinupmagazine.org/articles/interview-brazilian-architect-carla-juacaba-rio-de-janeiro.

78. Juacaba, interview by Wong.

79. Escobedo, interview by Prunotto, 25.