From Dreams to Abandonment

Lina Bo and the Culture of Living in Italy (1939-1946)

Keywords: Housing Culture, Home, Furniture, Italy, Editorial Activity, Lina Bo

Abstract

The essay investigates the Italian activity of Lina Bo by critically analyzing her literary contributions within the Italian publishing scene. The text proposes a critical rereading of Bo's writings which, published in Domus, Stile, Grazia and A. Attualità, architettura, abitazione, arte between 1941 and 1946, made an important contribution to housing culture in Italy. The fabric of the narrative ideally runs through the architect's biography, starting from the dream, or rather from the hoped-for creation of a modern taste for living, up to abandonment, which coincides with the move to South America. The theoretical principles enunciated in the Italian writings, connected to the promotion of a national housing paradigm, will be re-proposed and transferred to a different geographical context. In fact, the educational and social commitment infused by Bo in the dissemination of modern living will accompany her activity in Brazil as evidenced by the foundation of the magazine Habitat.

Author Biography

Raissa D'Uffizi, Università La Sapienza di Roma

She holds a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Design and a master’s degree in Design, Visual and Multimedia Communication. She has currently enrolled in the PhD course in 'Planning, design and architecture technology' at the University of Rome La Sapienza. Her research explores the concept of Italian design as a shared heritage, investigated as a cultural phenomenon in relation to its diffusion and perception in society. Parallel to her professional activity as a graphic designer, she has engaged in research projects on the themes of the history of design and visual communication, including the recent project La Milano che disegna (2020), on design archives in Milan.

Published
2021-10-04
Issue
Vol 8 No 15 (2021): Relational Geographies in the History of Design
Section
Research

Copyright (c) 2021 Raissa D'Uffizi

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Creative Commons NonCommercial-NoDerivates 4.0 international License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).