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The Convent of the Franciscan Fraternity of Bethany Designed by Mixtura

Designed by Mixtura, a team of young Italian architects, the convent of the Franciscan Fraternity of Bethany includes large spaces for prayer, hospitality, and meeting with the local community. The new conventual complex in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil is part of an important social project that the Fondazione Betania Onlus has been carrying out in Brazil since 2010. The project has already seen the construction of a kindergarten for 120 children from the neighboring favelas, and also involves the construction of a school complex for more than 500 children living in conditions of serious hardship.

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Photo credit: Cesare Querci

The design is based on a participatory method that involved architects and clients with the shared goal of creating a community that would establish a positive relationship between man, the built environment, and nature.

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Childrens playing in front of the refectory. Photo credit: Cesare Querci

The conventual complex is comprised of low-tech buildings, where wood textures design the structure and cladding, giving the building a strong architectural identity that is further enhanced from the use of local artisanal manpower and traditional cooling techniques.

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The cell building seen from north-west. Photo credit: Cesare Querci

Planimetrically, the classic typology of the convent, developed around a single closed cloister, is reinterpreted, multiplying the number of cloisters and thinning out the buildings to allow the wind, which constantly blows from the east, to circulate between the 6 buildings of the complex: a refectory, a church, an administration building, a library, a sacristy, and cells.

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The church. Photo credit: Cesare Querci

Large wooden roofs and brise-soleil protect the buildings from direct solar radiation, while permeable walls and rotating adjustable panels keep the rooms naturally ventilated, resulting in environmentally-friendly comfort without the use of mechanical systems.

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The balconies of the cells and the brise-soleil system. Photo credit: Cesare Querci

The complex was designed to combine maximum energy efficiency with minimum environmental impact, aided in large part by the use of photovoltaic panels and rainwater recovery systems.

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The refectory. Play of light on the walls. Photo credit: Cesare Querci

This is an ambitious and innovative project to provide young people of Bahia's favelas of Bahia a better future based on improved care of the body, mind, and spirit, as well as through the pedagogical and educational value of the architectural quality of the spaces:

As architects we strongly believe that architecture can positively change people's lives. The convent is a project that we have been involved in, both professionally and humanly, for many years. It was not only about creating a building, but also about understanding the deep nature of the place where we were going to design. Salvador de Bahia is a special place, where Western culture merges with African culture to foster a unique cultural and religious syncretism. But its suburbs are also very fragile and dangerous places, where violence and crime are the paradigm people deal with on a daily basis. The convent is located in this context, in the São Cristóvão neighborhood, one of the poorest and most dangerous in Salvador. Here, good architecture can be an antidote to the marginality to which millions of people are condemned in suburbs throughout the world. It is a sign of respect and dignity.

-Cesare Querci, Architect, Mixtura

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The cell building seen from the east. Photo credit: Cesare Querci

Young and passionate, the Mixtura architects enthusiastically accepted the challenge of creating a building that embodied the Franciscan charism of the clients, based on prayer and hospitality, while responding to needs derived from Salvador's tropical climate and social context.

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The refectory ati night. On the left the churchyard. Photo credit: Cesare Querci

About Mixtura

Mixtura is an architecture and landscape firm that carries out its activity in the field of research and architectural design of contemporary space in its formal, social, and aesthetic dimensions.

The Mixtura team is enamored by architecture and its ability to create relationships through built space. The firm thinks globally, and acts locally, with a strong belief that understanding the environmental and cultural specifics of each site, combined with client needs, can deliver designs that rise above the sum of their parts to become truly unique and special organisms.