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Abstract

The aim of this short study is to pay tribute, through drawing, to a woman of great courage and intelligence whose work as a designer has made her one of the most interesting figures in the architecture of the second half of the 20th century. It is undoubtedly her multifaceted activity, characterised by constant research without formal adherence, that will lead to exhibitions, studies and research on her of great interest, some of which are still in progress. Designer, stage designer, town planner, refined draughtswoman, museographer, but above all ‘architect’ in the broadest sense of the word, Lina Bo Bardi has left behind a testimony, not only graphic, of great intellectual refinement, which is still astonishing for its extraordinary beauty and which requires further disciplinary study, even though there are many studies on her figure and her work. This brief study is intended as a contribution from the disciplines of representation that wish to pay homage to the naturalised Brazilian architect through the study, interpretation and critical-analytical redesign of a house built by Lina Bo in 1958 and demolished in 1984. It is an act of respect for those who have spent their lives drawing. Casa do Chame-Chame will be realised in Salvador, capital of the state of Bahia in Brazil. Lina Bo Bardi carried out a series of preparatory studies that manifest the transition from rationalist to organic forms, in an evolutionary and conjectural process that almost imitates a freedom of thought and certainly a search for beauty. In the process of interpreting the various solutions, it seems as if Lina Bo was almost designing a new house for herself, so numerous are the sketches and drawings produced for the project, from which shines an empathy that transcends possible future building events. Eight years had passed since the completion of her own house, the Casa de Vidro, in which adherence to the poetics of Rationalism and, above all, to the examples of Le Corbusier are more than evident, except for the relationship between nature and architecture, which was much more important to Lina Bo than to the son of the clock decorator. When she designed Casa do Chame-Chame, the architect had already built Casa Cirell and carried out studies for low-cost housing and for Mario Cravo’s house, in which greenery and the environment are an integral part of the project; they are true ‘materials’ of architecture. This contribution, through the hermeneutic study of the various design phases, seeks to interpret and understand the process behind the representations, trying to make visible what is unfortunately no longer there; because to demolish is to lose.