Citadel of Freedom: Lina Bo Bardi and Sesc Pompéia

A special edition prepared in collaboration with the Brazilian institution Sesc São Paulo and dedicated to one of Lina Bo Bardi’s key architectural projects.

The publication accompanies If the Walls Became Water. Lina Bo Bardi exhibition at the GES-2 House of Culture (10 July — 19 October 2025) and focuses on one of the architect’s most ambitious works—the Sesc cultural and leisure centre housed in a former drum factory in the Pompeia district, opened in São Paulo in 1982. The project sought to create a “new reality”: an unconventional space for leisure that offered—but did not impose—cultural innovations on local residents. The centre included creative workshops, a theatre, a library, a cafeteria, rest areas, and sports facilities designed for people of different ages and interests. According to Bo Bardi’s concept, the renovation and adaptation of the factory involved careful intervention in the architecture of the historic workshops, the construction of two modernist sports-tower structures fitted into a challenging site, and the use of advanced architectural practices—from extended pre-design research to participatory planning.

All photos: Anya Todich

Lina Bo Bardi (1914–1992) was an Italian–Brazilian architect, designer, curator, and theorist, and one of the central figures of Latin American modernism. Among her notable works are the Glass House (Casa de Vidro, 1951), the building of the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP, 1957–1968), the multifunctional Sesc Pompeia centre (1982) in São Paulo, and the cultural complex Solar do Unhão in Salvador (1959–1963).

Lina’s colleagues who worked with her during the construction gathered in this book their personal recollections, press publications from the 1980s–1990s devoted to the project’s core ideas and Bo Bardi’s methods, Lina Bo Bardi’s own text about the Pompeia factory, a contribution by the current director of Sesc São Paulo, as well as architectural sketches, drawings, archival images, and contemporary photographs of the building. For the joint edition, V–A–C Press editors translated all materials into Russian while preserving the original layout of the Brazilian book and including a separate section with texts in English.