Sagittarius

With a Sagittarian sense of humour and playfulness, Lina Bo Bardi and Itsuko Hasegawa had a passion for the popular vernacular.

Open-minded, Playful, Joyous, Intellectual, Philosophical, Good-humored, Optimistic, Carefree, Tactless, Restless, Honest, Independent

Sagittarian women are noted for their sense of humour, playfulness and appreciation for the popular vernacular. The Italian-Brazilian woman architect Lina Bo Bardi and the Japanese woman architect Itsuko Hasegawa create in their "trademark" community centre spaces "mini-cities" that function as stage sets for play and family, community-oriented activities. Each centre functions as a counter-Disneyland for their upper-lower-class suburban edge communities. Both Hasegawa's Shonandai Cultural Centre and Bo Bardi's Factory Community Centre in Sao Paulo (SESC Pompéia) create a landscape architecture constructed from common, industrially produced materials. Both works represent a post-World War II approach to communitarian socialism. Both works are alike in that they are designed to facilitate social interaction and family fun for the local community; being non-elitist and composed with an array of heterogeneous elements. The approach of these "community centres" involves a more anthropological than sociological approach to family and community structure. Both Bo Bardi's and Hasegawa's works are child friendly. Hasegawa was clearly influenced by the American anthropologist Ruth Benedict, a leading expert on Japanese culture who was sent by the American government to Japan to instil democratic, communitarian ideas into the formerly authoritarian Japanese culture. In her Shonandai Centre, Hasegawa had the community itself make suggestions and help with the composition of the work. The community centre contains a library where young children can watch cartoons and older men can look at films of Japanese military exploits during the war. Hasegawa's Shonandai Centre serves an upper-lower-class community that is becoming upper-middle class. Hasegawa's work uses traditional Japanese ideas of light fluctuation as part of her landscape-oriented work. The perforated metal screen in her Shonandai Centre is used to designate "fantasy" clouds, allow fluctuating light to permeate through the porous material. Hasegawa often uses new, artificial manufactured materials to create rivulets and a new kind of non-traditional Japanese (non-paper) screen. Lina Bo Bardi's Factory Community Centre in Sao Paulo is set in an old factory building on the edge of the city in a semi-ghetto neighbourhood. Instead of constructing a modernist, utopian imposition of a new, clean community centre, she re-collects derelict factory buildings into a new mixture consisting of pleasurable cafes, restaurants, sports facilities and libraries. In this artificially reconfigured setting, brutalist concrete bridges traverse the old factory buildings. These walkways are open to the air and fresh light. Inside the main structure, which is the shell of the old factory, the "windows" are open organic forms busted out of the concrete, unlike conventional windows; they emit actual light and fresh air as opposed to conventional glass windows. These can be closed off with large sliding grille panels painted bright and playful colours. Bo Bardi's crude cuts into the pre-existing material fabric of the building to create voids and light shafts prefigure the later work of Gordon Matta-Clark. Unlike the seriousness of Matta-Clark, Bo Bardi does this with a Sagittarian sense of humour and playfulness.

One of the most influential conceptual artists of his time, Dan Graham currently lives in New York.
Jessica Russell studied and practiced art in Melbourne. She currently studies architecture at The Cooper Union in New York.

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