Reframing Lina Bo Bardi

Pablo Meninato, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at the Temple University Tyler School of Art and Architecture. His work focuses on the intersections of architecture, urbanism, and social change, with a special focus on Latin America. He is a recipient of the 2024-2025 Fulbright US Scholar Award for a research and publication project on Lina Bo Bardi. An architect, architectural critic, educator, and native of Argentina, Meninato has practiced and taught architecture and urbanism in Philadelphia, Buenos Aires, and Monterrey, Mexico. He currently serves on the Philadelphia Chapter of the Board of the Society of Architectural Historians. Meninato’s essays have been published in various magazines and journals. He is the author of the books Unexpected Affinities—The History of Type in the Architectural Project from Laugier to Duchamp (Routledge, 2018), Informality and the City—Theories, Actions and Interventions (co-edited, Springer, 2022), On Streets: Perspectives on Placemaking, Architecture, and Urban Design (co-edited Springer, 2025), and the co-authored book Urban Labyrinths: Informal Settlements, Architecture, and Social Change in Latin America (Routledge, 2024).Vanessa Grossman, Ph.D., is an architect, historian, curator, and Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design. Her work examines architecture's relationship to ideology, governance, and socio-environmental justice across the politics of modernism and modernization. Her research spans Cold War–era design cultures, labor, technologies, and urban and housing histories in France, Brazil, and the broader Global South, as well as the transnational networks that shaped them. She also engages the history of women in architecture during the Cold War, among them Renée Gailhoustet and Lina Bo Bardi, examining the political dimensions of their work and their avant-garde aspirations for social change. Her recent books include A Concrete Alliance: Communism and Modern Architecture in Postwar France (Yale University Press, 2024) and the co-edited Constructed Geographies: Paulo Mendes da Rocha (Casa da Arquitectura/Yale, 2024), recipient of the 2026 Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for Smaller Museums, Libraries, Collections, and Exhibitions. She is also co-author of Oscar Niemeyer en France: Un Exil Créatif (Éditions du patrimoine, 2021), and co-editor of Everyday Matters: Contemporary Approaches to Architecture (Ruby Press, 2021), AUA, une architecture de l'engagement, 1960–1985 (Cité de l'architecture/Éditions Dominique Carré, 2015), and Modernity: Promise or Menace? France, 101 Buildings, 1914–2014 (Institut français/Éditions Dominique Carré, 2014). She co-curated the 12th São Paulo International Architecture Biennale (2019) and has curated major exhibitions at the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine, and Casa da Arquitectura. She is a recipient of the 2026 Salvatori Research Award from the University of Pennsylvania Center for Italian Studies, which supports the research and publication project presented in this volume.

• Introduction (Pablo Meninato and Vanessa Grossman) Part One: Old World 1. Pietro Maria Bardi, Avant-garde and Politics (Vanessa Grossman) 2. 1914–1946. Lina Bo in Italy: Architecture ‘in Nuce’ (Sarah Catalano) 3.An Architect in the Editorial Office: Lina Bo Bardi and Magazines (1940–1953) (Viviana Pozzoli) Part Two: New World 4. Mutable Domesticity: Lina Bo Bardi’s Casa de Vidro (Marta Silveira Peixoto) 5. Which Words Did John Cage Offer to MASP? (Francesco Perrotta-Bosch) 6. From work to leisure. The resignification of the factory in Pompéia by Lina Bo Bardi (Renato Anelli) Part Three: Bahia 7. Bahia, 1960s: The impact of Lina Bo Bardi on young local architects (Nivaldo Andrade) 8. Reflections on Lina Bo Bardi’s Interventions in Built Heritage (Ana Carolina Bierrenbach) 9. A large living museum: Lina Bo Bardi's curatorial practice from Bahia to São Paulo (Carla Zollinger) Part Four: Transversalities 10. Lina Bo Bardi: Modernism at an Impasse (Pablo Meninato) 11. Stones, A Portrait: On Mineral Diplomacy and the Future of Architecture (Martin Cobas) 12. Modern Figuration: Lina Bo Bardi and the Return of the Real (Cláudia Costa Cabral) 13. Lina Bo’s Closet (Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley)