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Architects: Sotero Arquitetos
- Area: 36050 m²
- Year: 2019
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Photographs:Leonardo Finotti
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Manufacturers: mmcite, Aubicon, Ecopark, Fabrimetal, Latina Iluminação, Trimble, ZWCAD
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Lead Architects: Adriano Mascarenhas, Eric Cabussu, Helder da Rocha, Kaline Kalil, Técio Martins, George Almeida.
Text description provided by the architects. The urban requalification of the “Colina Sagrada do Senhor do Bonfim” is a project involving the redesign of one of the most important spaces in the city of Salvador da Bahia. It includes three plazas: Praça Teodósio Rodrigues de Faria, Largo do Bonfim and Praça Eusébio de Matos, reaching 36.050,00 m². The site topography depicts a 22 m high difference between levels, which suggests different uses on each one of them. While on its top-level uses are determined by visitors' religious and cultural manifestations, the lowest ones shelter secular programs, such as retail, services, and leisure.
In order to increase the church's symbolic aspect over its immediate surroundings, a requalification of the plaza was necessary to highlight its plaza/church axes, defined by an imaginary line that crosses them longitudinally. Amplifying the plaza limits, a continuous flow along with the church and its staircase was created, which emphasizes the importance of the church over other buildings and unifies them.
Designed by Sotero Arquitetos, the project is remarkable due to the number of complex actions it comprises, which ranges from small to wider scale, urban furniture design to traffic infrastructure deployment and landscape design. The project's goal focuses on the pedestrian experience instead of vehicles, reorganizes the traffic system, and rescues symbolic aspects of such a relevant religious site.
Vehicles tracks were lifted to the same level of pedestrians' walk, providing shared paths between vehicles and pedestrians. However, eight pedestrian crossing lines were provided through the route, delivering direct access for pedestrians and wheelchairs.
The site with its constructions been listed by IPHAN, since 1983, and has a large number of equipment, buildings, and public spaces that carry deep religious meaning. Between new buildings and redesigned ones, it is worthy to highlight: the Holy Water chapel, the Candles chapel, open space for celebrations, and the redesign of spaces of leisure, such as the fountain in the major square, stage, space designated for bars and restaurants, new parking lot, playground, accessibility features, reorganization of the road system, including taxis, bikes, public transportation, and sight-seen buses.
The role of the Holy Water chapel, alongside the Candles chapel, is to offer visitors access to the Holy water, creating sensorial experiences connected to the chapel materiality and light effect inside the building. The volume, which has only one frontal opening, promotes timelessness and sacredness perceptions that remote to convents cells.
Materials also contribute to rescuing the site history, such as parallelepiped and Portuguese stone floor, with black and white stone compositions, which evoke cultural icons as the strip, or “Bonfim measure”. It has approximately 45 cm and was used as a template in almost all the projects.
Furthermore, grey granite was used on benches, floor, and stairs finishing, and wood was chosen for streetlight supports and benches.
