Lina Bo Bardi and Her Helicoidal Wooden Staircase: Customized and Modernity
The Unhão superior, constructed in Salvador, Brazil inside the seventeenth century, consisted of a sugar mill with an enormous dwelling, chapel, and slave quarters. On the time, Salvador was certainly one of many largest and most important Brazilian cities, and its port was the positioning of a giant portion of the Portuguese colony’s sugar exports, an financial system fueled primarily by slave labor. The ensemble drew the attention of Italian-Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi at her first go to in 1958, all through which she spent some years working and instructing inside the metropolis. Following Bo Bardi’s decisive contributions, the buildings have been restored and have turn into the model new residence of the Museum of Modern Paintings and the Modern School. Nonetheless inside all the superior, the element that draws most likely probably the most consideration for its plasticity, efficiency, and symbolism is the helical picket staircase.
When approaching this adaptive reuse enterprise, Lina Bo Bardi contributed an methodology that was considerably progressive on the time in regards to the intervention in historic buildings. Whereas respecting heritage immensely, she “launched transforming elements that recycled the distinctive establishing, resulting in a recent and progressive intervention. (…) Lina Bo Bardi’s enterprise was ambivalent, with out denying the distinctive establishing; she reinvented it, discovering new analogies in constructing, with the ocean, with the Portuguese fortresses, and with the financial heritage.” [1]
Together with the helical staircase was a dangling architectural gesture inside the enterprise. Altering the demolished outdated staircase, Lina Bo Bardi’s new design represented the union of the conventional with the trendy, in a element that was every sensible and symbolic. “The staircase is trendy in its design, nevertheless harmonizes with elements from totally different situations present inside the establishing; and concurrently refers again to the standard, attributable to utilizing picket and the changing into system copied from ox carts.” [2] The helical staircase is and materializes every the driving thought of MAP (Museu de Arte Modern or Museum of Modern Paintings) and the restoration precept of the architect, who prevented distinguishing or hierarchizing the ‘historic half and classy half’. ” [3]
The staircase itself is, inside the absence of various phrases, spectacular. Positioned “unfastened in home,” a top quality that contributes to its prominence, it’s inscribed between 4 pre-existing sq. half pillars, and itself winds spherical a central spherical pillar. In plan, it’s inscribed in a rectangle of 4.15 m by 4.75 m roughly. “Each inclined perimeter beam helps 4 trapezoidal steps whose thickness measures seven centimeters by the use of a spike-type changing into, locked externally with a vertical wedge. The steps divide the beams into 4 equal components. The two exceptions to the foundations are the steps supported on the first and the ultimate beam. Inside the first, the 4 pillars divide the beam into rising components starting from the first: eighty, ninety-five, 100, and one and fifteen centimeters respectively. In addition to, step one of many staircase doesn’t start from the nook outlined by the meeting of the beams, nevertheless advances ten centimeters over the face of the pillar. Inside the last one, there are solely three pillars, the ultimate one being a double step, totaling thirty-one steps.” [4]
Few depart the experience equipped by the steps unmoved. Aldo van Eyck, an important Dutch architect, expressed his astonishment when visiting the establishing, stating of Lina Bo Bardi’s design: “She doesn’t dictate habits, she merely stimulates magnificence. It phases as you go from one diploma to the next. It makes all people who goes down the steps a noble specific particular person.”
Notes
[1] Zollinger, Carla Brandão. O Trapiche à beira da baía: a restauração do Unhão por Lina Bo Bardi. On the market at this hyperlink
[2] Geometrias Arte, Arquitetura, Filosofia e Natureza. As escadas de Lina. On the market at this hyperlink.
[3] Carranza, Edite Galote. Escada de Lina Bo. On the market at this hyperlink
[4] Igor Fracalossi. “Clássicos da Arquitetura: Photograph voltaic do Unhão / Lina Bo Bardi” 05 Dez 2015. ArchDaily Brasil. Accessed 29 Mar 2021.