Circuito Lina: Pivô Holds Visit #3 with Mãe Diana de Oxum and Walter Pinto Jr.

The Circuito Lina, a program developed by Pivô in partnership with the City of Salvador, held Visit #3 on May 29. The program traces a path toward the reactivation of the Coaty, an architectural complex designed in the 1980s by Lina Bo Bardi and João Filgueiras Lima (Lelé), with the participation of architects Marcelo Ferraz and Marcelo Suzuki.

The third edition of the walk took as its starting point the slopes and hillsides of Salvador’s Historic Center, understood as green territories that preserve vegetation, waterways, memories, Afro-Brazilian practices, and ways of inhabiting the land that have been historically embedded in the territory—elements that are fundamental to understanding the city as a living organism.

As part of the City of Salvador’s special program marking World Environment Day, the visit welcomed Walter Pinto Júnior, Deputy Secretary of Salvador’s Municipal Secretariat for Sustainability and Resilience, and Mãe Diana de Oxum, iyalorixá, Professor of Notório Saber at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), president of the Associação Egbé Axé, and an important leader in the articulation between terreiro communities, Afro-Brazilian culture, and the defense of traditional territories.

Through the dialogue between environmental management, terreiro knowledge, and narratives about Salvador’s urban formation, the walk also highlighted Lina Bo Bardi’s sensitivity to the remnants of vegetation that have endured through centuries of urban transformation, with particular attention to the case of Ladeira da Misericórdia.

There, architecture, hillside, and vegetation form what Lina described as a “wonderful tangle” of times, forms of life, and layers of landscape. Through the exchange between the invited guests and the narratives mediated by professor and researcher Dilton de Almeida (FAUFBA), the walk activated Ladeira da Misericórdia and its slopes as a space for reflection on nature and the sacred, bringing together a series of key questions to be considered in the process of revitalizing the territory.

Registration was carried out through an online form. The visits are free and open to the public and, at this stage, are primarily intended for researchers and individuals interested in urban history, memory, and territory. The number of places is limited and corresponds to the access conditions and restrictions of the site due to the ongoing works being carried out by the City of Salvador. Participants were selected on a first-come, first-served basis and received confirmation by email.

Circuito Lina is a program of walks and guided visits to Ladeira da Misericórdia, approached through different perspectives and experiences. The project initiates the activation process of Pivô Coaty and forms part of a broader research and development effort that Pivô has been carrying out under the title Centro-Vivo: Archive and Research Laboratory of Ladeira da Misericórdia, in collaboration with researchers and local cultural agents.

Each walk is led by different guests, who bring their own research interests and unique relationships with the territory, whether through architecture, urban history, cultural and social practices, memory, or lived experiences within the city. Learn more here.