In an era where digital fabrication and automation are increasingly present in architectural practice, manual craft is often seen as a luxury item—restricted to high-end projects whose clients can afford extended deadlines and collaborative processes requiring constant dialogue with artisans. This scenario might have sounded contradictory a few decades ago, when Lina Bo Bardi warned that a process of "deculturalization" was underway and that a critical assessment of "popular" Brazilian civilization was urgently needed to confront totalizing universalisms and *folklore*—the latter viewed by her as an instrument of state alienation designed to neutralize the subversive and transformative character of popular culture:
"A reexamination of the country's recent history is imperative. An assessment of 'popular' Brazilian civilization is necessary, even if meager in the light of high culture. This assessment is not the assessment of folklore, always paternalistically supported by high culture; it is the assessment 'seen from the other side,' the participatory assessment." – Lina Bo Bardi, in "Tempos de Grossura," p. 12
This assessment translated into a systematic survey of Brazilian craftsmanship—especially in the Northeast—but it also profoundly shaped Lina's worldview and practical approach. For her, architecture went beyond the mere design of buildings, manifesting itself transversally in furniture design, scenography, exhibition design, visual communication, and writing.
The publication *Tempos de Grossura* constitutes a central source for understanding the architect's critical thinking on popular production. Its opening chapter, "An assessment sixteen years later," highlights the temporal gap between 1980—the year she began structuring the book [1]—and 1964, the milestone of the military coup that established the dictatorship in Brazil and ended her work in Salvador. It was in Bahia that Lina began her research on popular culture and connected with key figures of the cultural scene, such as Martim Gonçalves (with whom she co-curated the exhibition *Bahia no Ibirapuera* in 1959), Glauber Rocha, and Pierre Verger.
In the publication, Lina Bo Bardi makes it clear that craftsmanship, as a social body, never existed in Brazil, but rather in what she termed "pre-craftsmanship," since craft presupposed a "union of specialized workers gathered for common interests of labor and mutual defense, in associations formerly known as 'guilds'" (Bardi, 1992, p. 12). However, this categorization is controversial and demands a critical perspective. The absence of formal guilds does not negate the existence of 'a complex social organization, which was also fundamental in the transmission of knowledge, following a parent-to-child relationship' (Jacques; Pereira, 2019, p. 64). Thus, the category of "pre-craftsmanship" risks invalidating this reality.
Furthermore, the very etymology of the word refers to the Latin ars—technique or skill allied with manual practice—underscoring a practical dimension that transforms through time, space, and the subjects who experience it. Craftsmanship thus reveals itself as a heterogeneous expression of high material value and strong immaterial weight, an aspect reflected in the transversal and unifying approach of the exhibitions designed by Lina, in both form and content.
"Bahia no Ibirapuera," 1959
Lina Bo Bardi arrived in Salvador in 1958 to lecture at the School of Fine Arts and subsequently established residency in the city after being invited to found and direct the Museum of Modern Art of Bahia (MAM-BA), which opened in 1960. During this period, she met theater director Martim Gonçalves, with whom she conceived the exhibition *Bahia no Ibirapuera*, held alongside the V São Paulo Biennial.
Her experience in Bahia represented a turning point in her career, allowing her to engage with artistic vanguards and draw closer to popular culture. In the exhibition, Lina and Gonçalves contrasted "Art" (institutionalized and self-centered) with "art" (a utilitarian concept tied to everyday needs). By displaying photographs, ceramics, ex-votos, and *carrancas* (traditional riverboat figureheads) in a sensory setting—with the floor covered in eucalyptus leaves and the ceiling lined with fabric—the exhibition challenged the boundaries between high culture and popular production.
"Nordeste," 1963
The Museum of Popular Art (MAP) at Unhão was an outgrowth of MAM-BA, designed to survey the country's popular "pre-craftsmanship" through both the museum and the Center for Craft Studies and Work (CETA). Lina did not believe in importing "industrial models from so-called First World countries" (Perrotta-Bosch, 2021, p. 155); instead, she maintained that scientific progress in developing nations must emerge from within their own cultures.
The inauguration of the MAP featured the exhibition "Nordeste," in which Lina critically examined popular production as a form of expression. She did this not only by bringing popular culture objects into the museum space but also by intervening in the exhibition design itself, creating an atmosphere reminiscent of open-air markets and warehouses through materials like unfinished pine boards used for bases and shelving.
"A Mão do Povo Brasileiro," 1969
The exhibition "A Mão do Povo Brasileiro" (The Hand of the Brazilian People) marked the opening of the second headquarters of the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP) on Paulista Avenue, demonstrating a continuation of the themes Lina had been exploring in Bahia. In the exhibition, she sought to showcase popular ingenuity and creativity through a wide array of objects—tools, means of transportation, everyday utensils, toys, ex-votos, *carrancas*, ceramics, paintings, and more.
The exhibition design recalled that of the *Nordeste* exhibition, held six years earlier in Salvador, utilizing bases and shelving made of pine boards. In "Mão do Povo Brasileiro," as in other exhibitions, Lina also proposed alternative solutions to accommodate the diverse range of displayed objects and their specific characteristics, such as pinning fabrics to the walls and suspending certain items.
"Design no Brasil - História e Realidade," 1982
In 1977, the restoration of the former factory of Sesc Fábrica da Pompéia began, in collaboration with André Vainer and Marcelo Ferraz. Although the project was only officially completed in 1986, starting in 1982, with "Design no Brasil - História e Realidade," exhibitions began to occupy the former factory's warehouses, also marking the beginning of Lina Bo Bardi's tenure as the programming director of the cultural center.
Just as the architectural project for Sesc developed in parallel with its construction, the process of curating, organizing, and setting up the exhibition occurred through direct, hands-on contact with the objects to be displayed (Sartorelli, 2019, p. 70). "Design no Brasil: História e Realidade," like "Nordeste" and "Mão do Povo Brasileiro," featured a vast number of objects organized to emphasize the collection as a whole, while also establishing thematic groupings. These included a division between "Manual Brazil (up to 1960)" and "Industrial Brazil (1970/1980)." Scaffolding with ramps was used, presenting exhibition pieces while simultaneously providing panoramic views of the rest of the show.
"Caipiras, Capiaus, Pau a Pique," 1984
Another exhibition held at Sesc two years later was "Caipiras, Capiaus, Pau a Pique," featuring a theme closer to architecture. The exhibition was the result of research in the Brazilian countryside, particularly in the Ribeira Valley and southern Minas Gerais. While the "Bahia no Ibirapuera" and "Nordeste" exhibitions focused on Northeastern culture through everyday objects, this show explored the interior of southeastern Brazil and *caipira* culture through a series of elements designed to represent local heritage.
In addition to hand-painted masts, the exhibition featured small wattle-and-daub (*pau a pique*) structures built directly within the exhibition space by Capitão and Dona Zita, a couple from Minas Gerais. Far from romanticizing scarcity, the show documented rural architecture as a popular art integrated into life: a utilitarian response to a harsh reality to be overcome, radically refusing the conversion of popular craft into a mere decorative object or symbolic fetish.
The exhibitions presented here represent a small sample of Lina Bo Bardi’s vast exhibition design and curatorial production. Beyond the extensive survey of the country’s cultural foundations she set out to conduct, her studies of popular production and what she called pre-craftsmanship translated into exhibition designs and curatorial texts that refused to look at popular culture in a superficial or romanticized way. The goal was always to approach this production critically, aiming for it to be incorporated into industrial processes and linked with schools and workshops integrated into museums and cultural centers.
In a contemporary landscape marked by digital acceleration and automation, the loss of contact with artisanal craft causes a deep estrangement, disconnecting individuals from the production process and the very materiality of the world. Looking at this production through the lens of Lina Bo Bardi is not about a nostalgic return to the past, but rather about recognizing in manual knowledge a design ethic, a constructive intelligence, and an indispensable path toward democratizing access to good design. By reclaiming the dignity of popular craftsmanship and its everyday utility, Lina's vision urges us to think of an architecture truly engaged with its social reality.
Notes:
[1] Although she began preparing it in 1980, the book was not actually published until 1994, after her death, by the Instituto Lina Bo e P.M. Bardi.
References:
BARDI, L. B. Tempos de grossura: o design no impasse. São Paulo: Instituto Lina Bo e P.M. Bardi, 1994.
JACQUES, P. B. et al. Fazer por desvios. In: JACQUES, Paola Berenstein; PEREIRA, Margareth da Silva (Eds.). Nebulosas do pensamento urbanístico. Salvador: EDUFBA, 2019.
LATORRACA, G. (Ed.). Maneiras de expor: arquitetura expositiva de Lina Bo Bardi (exhibition catalog). Museu da Casa Brasileira, Governo do Estado de São Paulo, Secretaria da Cultura do Estado, 2014.
PERROTTA-BOSCH, F. Lina: Uma Biografia. São Paulo: Todavia, 2021.
SARTORELLI, C. A. Arquitetura de exposições: Lina Bo Bardi e Gisela Magalhães. São Paulo: Edições Sesc, 2019.
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This article was written by Susanna Moreira. The translation is powered by AI.
