«L'Arte da sola non consola, l'economia insieme con la Poesia, sì»

Il testo è diretto a mettere in evidenza come nel lavoro di Lina Bo Bardi il concetto di "economia " assuma sempre un duplice significato per configurarsi da un lato come economia di materia (nell'uso consapevole di ciò che è disponibile ), dall’altro come ricerca della 'coerenza dell’opera’ (il rapporto di necessità tra le parti che compongono l'edificio).
La questione dell’assunzione e nobilitazione del relitto come materiale della costruzione e della composizione architettonica è stata affrontata a partire dall’analisi critica di alcune opere e oggetti costruiti dalla Bo Bardi, dove economia (di materia) e poesia (la ricerca della dimensione lirica della costruzione) sembrano fondersi in funzione dell’obiettivo (la dignità civile dell’architettura).
To the world of architecture the contemporary notion of
recycling descends not only from environmental and
economic considerations. Instead, it comes in the wake of a
series of aesthetic experiences that, from Surrealism to Dada,
have accustomed us to perceiving the contrast and
dissonance between objects as a part of our visual
experience.
The three-dimensional assembly of old and new buildings,
or parts of buildings, of old and new spaces in the design of
architecture belongs to the culture of transformation and
metamorphosis experimented with by all of the other arts
throughout the twentieth century. To date, only a handful of
masters have applied this technique to the invention of
architecture, adopting the recomposition of fragments as a
field of investigation that does not translate into the passive
acceptance of the heterogeneous, of the
ready made
as a ludic
practice.
Composing the heterogeneous fragments generated by
collective memory, the abandoned bodies of past civilisations
or human desires for the future, it is possible to imagine a
realist architecture, neither rational nor irrational, but intent
simply on interpreting recycling as poetry and economy.
In this sense, Lina Bo Bardi’s design of the SESC Pompéia
assumes a paradigmatic value. It metabolises the periphery
of the South American metropolis, «loading» the new
intervention with the energy deposited in the forms of a city
in transformation. It sublimates and assigns dignity to
suburban space beginning precisely with an element
common to the cities of both the first and third world:
industrial ruins.
The SESC stands apart from a banal operation of reuse, but
also from certain contemporary operations of recycling
where, for example, the use of Surrealist or Dada techniques
appears to have no other aim than the production of self
referential amazement, by the contrasting primary intention
that animates it: the desire to make it a space integrated
within the urban and social fabric of the megalopolis and at
the same time a space for the integration of popular
cultures.