Welcome to the Glass Age

103 Modernism while the first major work, the Ministry of Education and Public Health, was still under construction. In the works of Mies van der Rohe, with both the Tugendhat Villa and Barcelona Pavilion, it is possible to note a correlation of modern pavilion and glass house. This correlation is also present in Le Corbusier and Niemeyer, among other early 20 th century architects. As glass architecture consolidated itself as a modern language, the mid-century architects constructed a considerable amount of their glass houses in reference to early pavilions and glass houses. Philip Johnson and Lina Bo Bardi are prime examples of mid-century glass house architects. Still, this transition from the pavilion typology to the glass house typology is an ample one, the glass house or modern house are both a convergence of the experiences of the modern pavilion with the traditional bourgeois house due the clients’ social status. Therefore, the glass house possesses a social dimension in relation to its owners and easily typological study becomes a biography of the relation of house and owners. While Dr. Edith Farnsworth complex relation with Mies’ Farnsworth House is the most commonly known and well-documented example, here we should turn our attention back to Lina Bo Bardi and Pietro Maria Bardi with their Casa de Vidro (Figure 6.7): The Bardi’s history is interchangeable with the Museum of Art of São Paulo, with Pietro being the first director of the institution and Lina being the chief architect of the building at Avenida Paulista. Before the present day museum, Pietro and Lina organized the first gallery of MASP at Rua 7 de Abril , while not in a proper sense a “pavilion” or glass architecture for the matter, it was an important experience on expography and museography, and Lina would adopt some solutions both in her glass house’s bookshelves and in the new museum main exhibition hall 4 . The Casa de Vidro was conceived as an extension of the cultural program of MASP, a centerpiece on a network of guest houses to be constructed for artists and curators that Bardi exchanged letters and critical essays. As such, the main hall glass of the Casa de Vidro with its dining room, living room and office was designed as a room for this network of houses, facing with three complete glass facades the landscape of an unoccupied suburb of Morumbi in São Paulo. Lina’s glass house also kept a courtyard disposition of private spaces with a clear division between the owner’s rooms and service spaces, striking an interesting equilibrium of modern lifestyle and traditional praxis. 4. The second concrete-enclosed gallery of MASP at Avenida Paulista resembles to a certain degree the space Rua 7 de Abril gallery with a museographic approach varying with curatorship. Even when the network of guest houses was abandoned as a project, the main hall kept its concept as public space inside the private sphere. Pietro Maria’s business as both director of MASP and art dealer made the place a diversified art gallery, and Lina’s collections of Brazilian regional crafts juxtaposed high arts with local craftsmanship. Trees and other plants created a green landscape around the house as Morumbi was integrated in the urban landscape as an elite neighborhood. Glass transparency that was once defined by the hills, horizon and sky became a close shadowplay of trees and nature (Figure 6.8). The MASP at the bustling Avenida Paulista also establishes a relation of art and landscape through glass in the main exhibition hall: as the southwest facade opens a view to the top of the trees at Trianon Park, the northeast facades creates a vista to the axis of Avenida 9 de Julho and the historic city center. While most of the time the facades are not completely open to the landscape to protect the art from adverse effects of sunlight, the “glass easels” (Figure 6.9) supporting the paintings create a “collage-effect” inside the main exhibition hall, with the visual juxtaposition of styles and ages. Glass architecture came to build not only a new perception of space and art, but a new material reality for cities across the globe. From idyllic houses