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.