A teoria perdida: indagações de uma arquiteta modernista que queria ensinar

Lost theory: the inquiry of a modernist architect who wanted to teach In 1957, Lina Bo Bardi presents her thesis Propaedeutic Contribution to the teaching of Architectural Theory in public contest for the Theory of Architecture Chair at FAU-USP. The text remained unpublished until 2002, but it still is, nowadays, relatively unknown. However, the circumstance and the moment of its achievement suggests some lines for further reflection about the problem of critical assessment of the role of modern architectural production in the theoretical education of young modernist architects. It is well known the reference that first modernists addressed to academical theory – sometimes overtly, almost every time in a veiled manner. Nevertheless, that firsthand knowledge brought by the founding architects of the Modern Movement from their own "premodernist" education, should make room for a second version, institutionalized in the curriculum grid of official teaching. Written at the end of the fifties, that is, in the period of maximum expansion of modernist principles throughout the international architectural production, Lina's thesis discloses, in its wandering across architectural history, on the one hand, a remarka- ble inquisitive rigour, while on the other hand, there is an odd "buffering" which we would expect to be a first rank presence: the reference to the poetics of modern architecture itself, mastered by the author in her own works (MASP's design starts in 1958, just one year after the thesis' presentation). The enterprise suggests developments, but even so keeps the modernist production somewhat apart. This caution exemplifies the significant difficulties found to theoretically enunciate the operative contents of design practice.