Lina & Gio: the last humanists

Ana Araujo curated this exhibition exploring the relationship between two seminal figures in twentieth-century design. Lina Bo Bardi (1914–1992), best known for the buildings she designed and built in Brazil, was a prolific designer, architect, writer and curator, deeply committed to the promotion of the social and cultural potential of architecture. Before adopting Brazil as her home country in the late 1940s, Bo Bardi lived in Milan, where she collaborated with the renowned architect Gio Ponti (1891–1979). Ponti is perhaps better known as the founding editor of the celebrated design magazine Domus. Like Bo Bardi, he was a productive architect, designer, writer and curator. The exhibition comprised material sourced from archives in Milan (Italy), São Paulo (Brazil), Lisbon (Portugal) and London (UK) – original drawings by Lina Bo Bardi and Gio Ponti, letters exchanged between the two, magazines, film footage. It also displayed a selection of specially commissioned photographs by Spanish photographer Inigo Bujedo Aguirre