Edited by Olivia de Oliveira

This volume is a reprint in book form of the out-of-print number of the magazine 2G devoted to Lina Bo Bardi and is the only publication currently on the market that presents all the built work of the genial Brazilian architect of Italian origin. Lina Bo Bardi was born in Rome in 1914 and graduated from the Architecture Faculty of Rome University in 1940. After working for Gio Ponti and editing the magazine Domus, she left postwar Italy in 1946 and emigrated to Brazil -the nationality of which she would later adopt- her entire professional career being undertaken in that country. With its radical, modern approach, all her work is redolent with the ambition to get closer to popular lifestyles and local traditions by doing away with the distance between 'elite' and 'popular' culture. Her designs have a conceptual, material and ethical expressiveness that have brought her international renown, and it is in her built work, all of which is included in this volume, where this way of understanding architecture is especially apparent. Through the 19 works created by Lina Bo Bardi this books provides the keys to understanding her architectural legacy. Using the texts of each project Olivia de Oliveira, the guest editor, composes a multifaceted discourse about the work of Lina Bo Bardi that enables us to contextualize and understand it in all its architectonic, cultural, political and social complexity.