Projected in 1950 by the Brazilian and Italy born modernist architect as the couple’s home, the Glass House today holds part of their particular art collection that they acquired throughout the years. With its harmonies of light and geometry, density and apparent weightlessness, Casa de Vidro [Glass House], by Lina Bo Bardi (Rome, Italy, 1914 – São Paulo, Brazil, 1992) in Morumbi, São Paulo, is one of the most beautiful of all architect’s homes. It is also, certainly, one of the most important works of 20th-century Latin American architecture, forging ideas and motifs that would later be extended and reworked in projects as MASP – Museu de Arte de São Paulo (1957–1968), along the Avenida Paulista, and the SESC Fábrica da Pompeia (1977), a huge multidisciplinary complex, on the site of an old factory. Casa de Vidro was completed in 1951, the year of Bo Bardi’s naturalisation as a Brazilian, roughly five years after her relocation from a devastated Italy. Lina Bo once wrote, following the war, that ‘in Europe man’s house is now rubble’1. But just as much as the ruin allegorises loss, Casa de Vidro looks out onto its forest surrounds with a defiant sense of optimism, symbolising rebirth and renewal. It seems to be both grounded within and floating above its environment, combining a stability and lightness similar to that which Bardi achieved with the freestanding space in MASP and her glass panes, designed to display artworks in the Museum.

The year 1982 saw the arrival of a new and striking architectural landmark in Brazil, in the city of São Paulo. It was the Centro de Lazer Fábrica da Pompéia (Pompéia Factory Leisure Centre), now known simply as SESC Pompéia. An architectural complex in some ways shocking, combining a red-brick building that had housed a drum factory since the 1920s – well proportioned, in the style of British factories – with three huge and unconventional concrete towers connected by aerial walkways. Lina Bo Bardi, who had suffered ostracism for almost ten years, as a victim of the military regime and also of the conventional architectural outlook, surprised everyone with this gift to São Paulo. Paris had just seen the inauguration of the Pompidou Centre, an extravagant architectural model that caused a stir among students and young architects, and which would soon become a point of reference. It symbolised an escape route from a modernist model already somewhat in decline. Comparisons were therefore inevitable with the new cultural and sports centre that had sprung up in the district of Pompéia: they shared an industrial idiom; abrupt changes of scale; colours, many colours; and, principally, ‘strangeness’ in the context of their surroundings. And yet, despite all this, the two proposals were very distant and dissimilar in their origins, ideology and results. © Marcelo Ferraz

An old sugar mill, the Solar consists of a number of beautifully preserved heritage buildings centered around a lovely stone courtyard that dates back to the 18th century. Half the fun is just to wander around and explore the various buildings set on the waterfront (the views are fabulous). The main building houses a small modern art museum; you'll find some works of Portinari and Di Cavalcanti on display.