Atualização funcional e valores culturais do Hospital-Sanatório Santa Terezinha: desafios e conflitos na preservação da arquitetura moderna antituberculose

Abstract

The fields of conservation of the built heritage and architecture for health care facilities have their specific norms that often do not dialogue among themselves. Considering the recent efforts to value and conserve modern architecture, intensified worldwide in the last decades, it is possible to observe countless hospitals built during this period that have unique cultural values, many times not even acknowledged. Within the few examples inventoried and safeguarded, the antituberculosis architecture assets stand out, which contributed with its hygienic and therapeutic principles to the establishment and dissemination of the modern language worldwide, and has recently been valued, despite the several challenges and conflicts faced in the conservation of its cultural values. Therefore, the general purpose of the present case study is to analyze, from the understanding of its historical course, the physical space transformations resulting from the needs of functional updating of the Santa Terezinha Sanatorium, the only example of this type built in Bahia, considering the obstacles and clashes for the conservation of its cultural values. Thus, the methodology included bibliographical survey, field research, besides the documental analysis regarding the original project, its construction, reforms and new projectual proposals until the present moment. The data discussion and the comparative study were developed based on the historical and architectural analysis of the building. Finally, a follow-up of the recent processes of struggle for the conservation of the worth of the old sanatorium was carried out. As a result, the cultural values of the object connected to the production of the antituberculosis architecture were identified and analyzed, summarized and distributed in five categories: 1) historical-social value; 2) aesthetic-projectual-functional value; 3) technical-scientific value; 4) remarkable-exemplarity value; 5) and authenticity-integrity / conservation value. The Santa Terezinha Sanatorium, currently Octávio Mangabeira Specialized Hospital, inaugurated in 1942, was the pioneer building of modern architecture in Salvador, having international notoriety and an emblematic aesthetics. In eighty years, it has experienced moments of degradation and reforms to conserve its hospital use, incorporating new activities that demanded adaptations in its spatiality. Despite the lack of heritage protection and the recent threats of mischaracterization, the continuity of the sanatorium typology is noted, with a reading of the volumetry, the form, and the antituberculosis architectural solutions that were typical of the first phase of modern architecture in Salvador. Thus, it is possible to reach the conclusion that the building endowed with cultural values and about to get a historic property designation is not an object that must be mummified in order to be conserved; on the opposite, it must remain in use, serving society, and can be adjusted to new functions without necessarily suffering changes that may deconfigure its primordial essence.