With her iconic buildings, furniture, exhibitions, and theories on architecture and design, Italian-born Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi created an outstanding body of work. Raised and educated in Italy, she played an important role in the development of modern architecture in Brazil. She evolved an approach to design that was unique to her, which placed the social significance of construction and its cultural roots at the heart of the architectural endeavour.  By striving to create an ‘architettura povera’, Lina Bo Bardi can be seen as a forerunner of today’s emergent socially driven ‘architecture engagée’.

“My research into architecture proceeds from the idea that a society’s past and present can be read through its buildings. Lina Bo Bardi’s architectural structures have the rare capability to tell stories and incarnate the memory of a particular place.”– Veronika Kellndorfer, 2014