A privileged spot between the Atlantic Ocean and the mountains was the site chosen for Lina Bo Bardi to build a museum by the water, in the municipality of São Vicente. The project, which was never completed, offered an opportunity to give her designs for exhibition spaces architectural form, advancing some of the concepts that would later flourish at the Museum of Art of São Paulo.

Elevated over the sand, the horizontal volume houses the program and defines a shaded space, without encumbering the views from the street to the water. Three of the facades are opaque, clad in white marble, while the main front is completely transparent, establishing free-flowing views from the artworks to the landscape. Aside from the large art gallery, the building harbors an auditorium with mobile walls, a courtyard that pierces the volume, and an outdoor exhibition space. The structure consists of five reinforced concrete frames placed at twenty-meter intervals, which hold a suspended prism. This ensures that the interior space can be totally open-plan, an essential condition for Lina Bo Bardi’s museum design, where the itinerary is not predetermined but rather flows uninterruptedly in all directions.