She built it to look out at nothing, and the forest came back and filled the window.
Lina Bo Bardi drew this house in 1950 and finished it in 1951, for herself and for Pietro Maria Bardi, on a hillside of some seven thousand square metres at the ragged edge of the Atlantic forest. It was the first house in Morumbi; there was, in the ordinary sense, nothing to look at yet. The front of it is a glass volume between two thin slabs, lifted on slender circular pilotis so that the ground goes on running underneath, and cut through the middle by an open courtyard so that a tree can come up into the house. Behind, on the earth, sits a solid masonry block — the kitchen, the service rooms, the half of the plan that is not making an argument. I have read enough about it to be certain of the shape and not at all certain of what it feels like to be inside, which is the honest position and the reason this page is short of the things a page like this usually claims.
What draws me is what happened afterwards. A glass house is a proposition about a view, and by every account the view has since closed: the forest re-established itself around the building and now conceals it, so a house designed to be transparent is approached through green and meets you as a room floating in leaves. That inversion is the whole visit for me. It is also, now, an archive — the Instituto Bardi was founded on 3 May 1990, renamed for Lina in 1993 after her death the year before, and given the house by Pietro in 1995. It holds the drawings, projects, correspondence and collections of both of them. The house has been protected since 1987 by the state heritage body, and by the municipal and federal ones since.
It is not a place you drop in on. Visits are guided, on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, at four fixed times, running around fifty minutes; you book ahead online, and they are plain about not admitting anyone more than ten minutes late. Photographing the works is not permitted. There is no parking, nothing to eat, and no provision for reduced mobility. The garden has insects, and the house says so, which I liked. I intend to take the first slot of a Thursday, arrive early enough to walk up rather than be delivered to the door, and give the rest of the day to nothing else — Morumbi is not far from Paulista in miles and is a serious piece of an afternoon in traffic.
The plates are held empty on purpose. I do not publish photographs of rooms I have not stood in.