Albert Frey and Lina Bo Bardi: A Search for Living Architecture

An unprecedented exploration, this exhibition reveals the surprising but compelling synergy in the visionary building and design of two midcentury architects, Frey and Bo Bardi, who shared the belief that architecture is a way to connect people, nature, building, and living.

Albert Frey and Lina Bo Bardi: A Search for Living Architecture is an unprecedented exploration of two visionary architects who critically expanded the meaning and practice of modern architecture. Bo Bardi (1914–1992) emigrated from Italy to Brazil in 1946 and Frey (1903–1998) from Switzerland to the United States in 1930. Though the two did not meet, Bo Bardi translated Frey’s treatise Living Architecture for Domus , and their personal and professional odysseys are representative of the emergence of São Paulo and Southern California as architectural and cultural laboratories in the middle of the 20th century. They each created modernist houses, furniture, public buildings, and approaches to urban design that move beyond strict rationalism to embrace the social and environmental contexts specific to their adoptive homes in Brazil and Southern California. Bo Bardi and Frey shared a belief in architecture as a way to connect people, nature, building, and living. As they embraced modern technologies, they responded to the climate and terrain of the local environment and the people whose personal and social experiences were touched by those conditions.