Modern architecture and the production of home space: the trajectories of Charlotte Perriand, Lina Bo Bardi e Carmen Portinho

Abstract

This Project of investigation aims to study the shift that the so called Modern Architecture promoted in the inner space of houses and its furniture. So, we choose to study some aspects of the careers of the architect Lina Bo Bardi, the designer Charlotte Perriand and the engineer Carmen Portinho, as the three defined themselves as linked to Modern Movement. It is evident the intention of giving a certain gendered bias to architectural studies, and to the researches of production of space, examining how a both silent and tacit division labor can explain the oeuvre of the three of them. Although the manifests of the very beginning of modern architecture define it as universal, its practice shows a lot of internal divisions: geographic and periodic ones and the one that interest us most: gendered differences. One can note that this bias reveals the intention of giving a gendered approach to the studies of both modernity and modernism, analyzing how a tacit and silent division of labor worked behind the production of the three characters of the research. The three characters chosen for the research have in common a solid career, and it's in their professional trajectory that one can search gender movements, with special attentions to the material production of them: drawings, designs, written pieces, buildings, objects and furniture. It's also important to observe the shifting in the house and in the ideal of domesticity, and we must replace the history of the professional knowledge (architecture, engineering and design) that promoted his changes. The hypotheses is that, besides the events of constraint and self-constraint, the feminine presence in these fields is responsible for a symbolic revolution. (AU)