{"id":118109,"date":"2025-09-04T11:39:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T11:39:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/118109\/"},"modified":"2025-09-04T11:39:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T11:39:11","slug":"serious-play-the-subversive-designs-of-lina-bo-bardi-and-aldo-van-eyck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/118109\/","title":{"rendered":"Serious Play: The Subversive Designs of Lina Bo Bardi and Aldo van Eyck"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Serious<\/a>Lina Bo Bardi \/ Preliminary Study \u2013 Practicable Sculptures for the Belvedere at Museu Arte Trianon, 1968. Credit line: Doa\u00e7\u00e3o Instituto Lina Bo e P.M. Bardi, 2006. Cortesia de MASP.<\/p>\n

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https:\/\/www.archdaily.com\/1033580\/serious-play-the-subversive-designs-of-lina-bo-bardi-and-aldo-van-eyck<\/p>\n

Aldo van Eyck<\/a> and Lina Bo Bardi<\/a> were two subversive figures<\/a>. Their visions of collectivity<\/a> and playfulness<\/a>\u2014though applied to very different kinds of structures\u2014shared a common ground: an idea of architecture that goes beyond design. For both, architecture was a living space, animated by appropriation, movement, and exchange. From Dutch playgrounds<\/a> to thw S\u00e3o Paulo Museum of Art<\/a>, their ideals intertwined, reinforcing the notion of an architecture where anyone could become a child again.<\/p>\n

\"Serious<\/a>\"Serious<\/a>\"Serious<\/a>\"Serious<\/a>\"Serious+ 8<\/a><\/p>\n

Aldo and Lina belonged to the same generation\u2014he passed away in 1999 at the age of 80, and she earlier that decade, at 77. They met in person in 1969, when the Dutch architect visited S\u00e3o Paulo and was received for lunch at Lina\u2019s Glass House<\/a>. They never worked together, but fate would later arrange an unexpected encounter. Years after Lina\u2019s death, Aldo stumbled upon an exhibition dedicated to her work. The experience struck him so deeply that he crossed Brazil<\/a> to see her architecture firsthand. From that posthumous encounter, inevitable parallels emerged\u2014affinities that had until then remained dormant. This web of coincidences and silent dialogues became the thread of several studies, most notably the book Lina por Aldo: Affinities in the Thought of Architects Lina Bo Bardi<\/a> and Aldo van Eyck<\/a>, published in 2024.<\/p>\n

\"SeriousAD Classics: SESC Pomp\u00e9ia \/ Lina Bo Bardi \u00a9 Pedro Kok<\/a><\/p>\n

The similarities between Lina and Aldo, however, are not found in the visual forms of their projects but in something deeper: an architecture that opens itself to people and is only complete through their interactions. Within this horizon, playfulness\u2014in all its forms\u2014appears as a shared language, capable of transforming spaces into places of encounter, movement, and discovery.<\/p>\n

Related Article Playgrounds: Conquering Public Spaces<\/a> <\/p>\n

All nations play, and they play in remarkably similar ways. \u2014 Johan Huizinga<\/a><\/p>\n

\"SeriousAD Classics: SESC Pomp\u00e9ia \/ Lina Bo Bardi \u00a9 Flickr beatriz marques (CC BY-NC-ND)<\/a><\/p>\n

Between 1947 and 1978, while working for the Amsterdam<\/a> municipality, Aldo van Eyck<\/a> designed nearly 750 playgrounds. More than places for children to play, these were territories of imagination and at the same time anchors of identity for communities rebuilding after the Second World War. His network of playgrounds acted as a quiet but powerful urban strategy\u2014reversing the rigid, functionalist character of Modernism and restoring to cities something essential: the dimension of encounter.<\/p>\n

\"SeriousKrugerplein, with playground equipment designed by Aldo Van Eyck. Image via Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/p>\n

Van Eyck advocated for an architecture that served everyday life and social interaction. In Amsterdam\u2019s playgrounds<\/a>, he developed a simple vocabulary\u2014concrete-edged sandpits, rounded blocks, curved bars, trees, and benches\u2014that could be recombined in different ways to fit each site. His approach was tactical rather than formulaic: filling vacant lots with temporary structures that invited appropriation. By choosing abstract elements over traditional equipment like slides or seesaws, he encouraged new ways of playing. For Aldo, the geometries were secondary<\/a>; the real architecture emerged through the movement of children\u2014a form that was ephemeral, constantly reinvented with each game.<\/p>\n

\"SeriousPlayground Aldo van Eyck. Ceescamel, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Lina was raising the MASP<\/a> on pilotis, \u201creturning\u201d the open span to the city\u2014a gesture that Aldo himself would highlight during his visit to the museum. Conceived as a space for gathering and social life, the project originally included playful elements for children, recalled by her biographer Francesco Perrotta-Bosch<\/a>, though they were never built. Still, Lina\u2019s sense of playfulness was never limited to childhood. It was expressed in her defense of free appropriation\u2014spaces without predetermined uses, always open to the unexpected.<\/p>\n

This intention is evident throughout her work\u2014not only in the open span of MASP<\/a> but also at Sesc Pompeia<\/a>, where the reflecting pool and fireplace evoke water and fire, creating comfort and inviting multiple forms of use. The same spirit shaped Teatro Oficina<\/a>, conceived as a space to be lived with the body: climbed, traversed, discovered. As Marcelo Ferraz<\/a> observed, Lina designed \u201clike a child playing at building cities, inventing worlds.\u201d Her spaces are half-open forms, \u201cvoids impregnated with possibilities<\/a>,\u201d where large scales embrace everyday happenings while countless small-scale devices spark affection.<\/p>\n

\"SeriousAD Classics: Teatro Oficina \/ Lina Bo Bardi e Edson Elito \u00a9 Nelson Kon<\/a><\/p>\n

All these gestures reveal, almost tangibly, what Lina understood architecture to be. In the 1980s, while speaking with students at Sesc Pompeia<\/a>, she was asked what, in her view, was the true role of architecture. Her answer did not come in technical or academic terms<\/a>, but in an image at once ordinary and profoundly human: \u201cArchitecture<\/a>, for me, is seeing an old man or a child with a full plate of food gracefully crossing the restaurant space in search of a place to sit at a communal table.\u201d In that simple yet tender scene, Lina condensed her vision of architecture. Francesco Perrotta-Bosch<\/a>, in his essay A Fable of Two Scales from Lina por Aldo<\/a>, returns to this moment, underscoring the power of a definition rooted in human action.<\/p>\n

\"SeriousAD Classics: S\u00e3o Paulo Museum of Art (MASP) \/ Lina Bo Bardi \u00a9 Pedro Kok<\/a> <\/p>\n

A temple, a monument, the Parthenon or a baroque church exists in itself by its weight, its stability, its proportions, volumes, and spaces. But until a person enters the building, climbs the steps, and inhabits the space in a \u2018human adventure,\u2019 architecture does not exist\u2014it is a cold, unhumanized scheme. \u2014 Lina Bo Bardi<\/a><\/p>\n

\"SeriousAD Classics: SESC Pomp\u00e9ia \/ Lina Bo Bardi \u00a9 Pedro Kok<\/a><\/p>\n

From this perspective, it becomes clear how Lina and Aldo distanced themselves from the figure of the demiurge architect, who seeks absolute control over forms and behaviors. Instead, they embraced an open, incomplete architecture\u2014one that only comes fully alive in the presence of others: in play, in the crossing of a plate of food, in the body that climbs, runs, and discovers. In this space of freedom and unpredictability, their works converge: an architecture less about imposition and more about invitation, where every person\u2014regardless of age\u2014can become an author of space.<\/p>\n

Against the architectural canons of twentieth-century modernism, Aldo van Eyck<\/a> and Lina Bo Bardi<\/a> were subversive, unruly, and defiant. Their standards stood far from the Modulor, that supposedly golden figure of the average adult male. In so many of their projects, Aldo and Lina took as their measure the gaze closest to the ground, the hearing nearest to footsteps, the touch within reach of the soil. Their human scales were those of mischievous boys and girls […] ready for playful revolutions to unsettle any and every spatial order.” \u2014 Francesco Perrotta-Bosch<\/a><\/p>\n

\"SeriousAD Classics: SESC Pomp\u00e9ia \/ Lina Bo Bardi \u00a9 Julio Roberto Katinsky. Courtesy of Arquigrafia<\/a><\/p>\n

This article is part of the ArchDaily Topics: Shaping Spaces for Children<\/a>, proudly presented by KOMPAN<\/a>.
At KOMPAN, we believe that shaping spaces for children is a shared responsibility with lasting impact. By sponsoring this topic, we champion child-centered design rooted in research, play<\/a>, and participation\u2014creating inclusive, inspiring environments that support physical activity, well-being, and imagination, and help every child thrive in a changing world.<\/p>\n

Every month we explore a topic in-depth through articles, interviews, news, and architecture projects. We invite you to learn more about our ArchDaily Topics<\/a>. And, as always, at ArchDaily we welcome the contributions of our readers; if you want to submit an article or project, contact us<\/a>.<\/p>\n