This publication concerns the significant, yet little-known contribution of Italian–Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi (1914–1992), a prolific designer, curator, editor, and activist with influential presence in both sides of the Atlantic. Bo Bardi produced a vast collection of drawings, objects, magazines and manuscripts and a few but highly significant buildings materializing her revision of modern architecture. Her humanistic and hybrid work offers a lesson of ethical and political relevance to contemporary architecture and culture. The book presents the first comprehensive study of Bo Bardi's work and life, and also contributes to the debate about intercultural exchanges and the critical development of architecture in the second part of the twentieth century.

Zeuler R. Lima is an architect and associate professor at Washington University with over 20 years of teaching and research experience in the United States, Brazil, and Europe. His research and international publications encompass studies of modernity, cultural exchanges, and globalization in architecture and urbanism. He earned his PhD from the University of São Paulo and was the recipient of a postdoctoral fellowship from the Department of Comparative Literature at Columbia University. For the past ten years, he has been deeply dedicated to the study of Lina Bo Bardi's life and work. As a scholar, Lima has published extensively about several topics, winning the 2007 Bruno Zevi Prize for architectural history and criticism for his work on Bo Bardi. This piece, published in a book by the Zevi Foundation, introduces the development of Bo Bardi’s work based on her life-long correspondence with Bruno Zevi. As an architect, Lima codirected an architectural office that won several national design awards for Brazil, including those for the Legislative Assembly of Brasília, inaugurated on the Monumental Axis in 2010. Lima is fluent in six languages and also practices drawing, painting, and printmaking.