Lina Bo Bardi: de Salvador ao Benin

House of Benin in Salvador and House of Brazil (or Bahia) in Benin, were two idealizations, members of the recovery project of the Historic Center of Salvador in the 1980s, conducted by the architect Lina Bo Bardi. As is known, Lina was in Salvador between late 1950 and 1964, a period in which she regained Solar Unhão. For Lina herself, the work she developed at “polígono da seca” or "drought polygon", in which the recovery of Unhão is inserted, was her most important project, although interrupted by the dictatorship. In the 1980s, a period which in Brazil and, certainly in Bahia, as cultural issues began to be dealt with a focus on diversity, Lina returns to Salvador to lead the recovery of its historic center. That is, the architect, for a second time, also develops a work of intervention in the architectural heritage and urban Soteropolitano. Although the cultural atmosphere at that moment was not the same as the 1950's, this was, in a sense, an atypical period of the country’s life as a whole, since it was coming out of a considerable period of dictatorship. Marked so by this political opening, Brazil was dominated by a force and a new atmosphere, full of hope, in which the attention to the most popular cultural values began to stand out. Thus, as part of this project, the creation of the House of Benin in Bahia and its sister on the African continent, both had the intention to celebrate and reaffirm the cultural exchange between the two countries, which had existed since the time of slavery, when most Africans were sent from Benin to build the Colonial Brazil and, returning to their country of origin, they would also carry cultural marks from Brazil to Africa. The project involved analyzes the work of the House of Benin in Salvador conducted from intervention in colonial building, and the House of Bahia project in Benin. The main purposes are to establish the means of intervention used by the architect Lina Bo Bardi in the construction of a narrative, its references as well as highlight the historical context by which they were created.