History

Instituto Lina Bo e P.M.Bardi, at the beginning named by Instituto Quadrante, was created in 1990 to promote study and research especially in the areas of architecture, design, urbanism and Brazilian popular art. With a focus on exhibitions, publications, lectures and conferences, Instituto Bardi provides access to relevant aspects and unpopular/less known to Brazil artistic and cultural thought and production.

Lina Bo and her husband Pietro Maria Bardi were responsible for relevant interventions in the Brazilian cultural scene. Pietro structured MASP and invested Brazil’s professionalization area.

Architect Lina worked in different areas such as design, education, cinema, fashion, environment. The Glass House, the first work built by the Italian naturalized Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi has become an icon of modern architecture and represents in a timeless the couple’s innovative thinking and way of life: simple, engaged, full of diversity, possibilities, and beauty.

The Glass House, designed in 1950 and listed by CONDEPHAAT as a historical heritage in 1987, today the headquarters house of the institute and the collection of the Bardi couple.

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Just as the tipping request was configured as a preservation action of a project for posterity, another action of its kind emerged in 1990, when the couple founded the Quadrante Institute, designed to maintain the memory of their cultural project. According to the minutes of the general meeting of the Institute’s constitution, at the house on May 3 of that year, Pietro, Lina, D. Graziella were present Valentinetti, Lina’s sister, Fábio Luiz Pereira Magalhães, Modesto Souza Barros Carvalhosa, José Mindlin, Renato Requixa, Renato Magalhães Gouveia. The goals of the Institute would be to develop cultural activities and studies related to the history of art and architecture, making the house its headquarters.