the Italian design tradition: LINA BO BARDI and PAOLA LENTI

The Sao Paolo Recreational Center, 1977-1986

One of my most favorite architects and designers is an Italian bred and Brasil based in the later part of her life, LINA BO BARDI.

She designed the Sao Paolo Museum of Art (1968), SESC Fábrica da Pompéia or the Sao Paolo Recreational Center (pictured left, completed 1986) , and is known for her own glass house (Philip Johnson completed his CT glass house in 1950), which she built as her residence in 1951, after receiving her Brazilian citizenship. The house is set amongst the old Brazilian forest and rare plant species on a 7,000 sq meter property overlooking Sao Paolo. A beautiful setting...

But she also designed furniture and her most famous creation is the BOWL chair from 1951.

I have not seen anything this inspiring until I discovered another Italian female designer who seems to be inspired by Lina Bo Bardi's work. PAOLA LENTI creates wonderful lines of indoor and outdoor furniture, pillows, rugs...

Lenti's furniture seem equally minimal in design and inventive in materials. Designers Patricia Urquiola, Eliana Gerotto created for Paola Lenti a Nido chair, which is directly hand woven on to the structure with a round rope. The simplicity of the thin, elegant base, and the roundness of the shell are much too inviting.
Through this craftsmanship a few things are achieved here simultaneously: durability, homogeneity, and certain intimacy that can only be achieved in products that are handmade.

Here's more on Lenti and her designs.. 

More reading on Lina Bo Bardi, check out this great article in AFTERALL, ‘This Exhibition Is an Accusation’: The Grammar of Display According to Lina Bo Bardi, by Roger M. Buergel. 

Lina Bo Bardi Bowl Chair, 1951

and more examples of Lenti's designs...