New in Observations: “Reading MASP as a Work of Urban Design.” Essay by Judith K De Jong (
@dejongurbanprojects )
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The Museu de Arte São Paulo (1968), or MASP, by the architect Lina Bo Bardi, is widely and rightly recognized for its radical reimagination of what a museum could be and do, extending to its groundbreaking interior display system, recently reinstalled. Although architecturally distinct from its surroundings, MASP is equally important as a deeply contextual work of urban design that established a new present and future for collective life in the area, especially through its covered plaza. Moreover, MASP does so within the spatially loose environment of Avenida Paulista. Introduced by the urban historian Lewis Mumford, the term “spatial looseness” described the “breakup of the old urban forms,” such as Boston’s or São Paulo’s traditional urban core, into “a new type of open plan and a new distribution of urban functions.” Mumford’s interest is a specific kind of modern, Western, primarily residential suburbanization focused on living in nature. However, the more open forms of twentieth century US development—characterized especially by more space in-between buildings and “object” buildings in the round—are also found in much urbanization worldwide that often has little to do with nature and creates different urban design conditions. MASP is an object in a field of other objects, and exemplary of the building as a work of urban design in a spatially loose context.
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Link in bio.
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Images: Overall view of Museu de Arte São Paulo on Avenida Paulista, 2023. © Judith K. De Jong. (2,3) MASP, São Paulo, 2022. © Iker Gil (
@ikergil ).
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