Santa Thereza Village

The project for Santa Thereza Village originated when a community from the city of Bagé created a movement to preserve a group of buildings that from a historical, architectural and cultural point of view needed to be valued to keep alive the memory of a fundamental part of our society’s background: the sun-dried salt beef economy and the social and cultural life that emerged from it in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is a unique group of cultural artifacts that represents an important moment of the prairies’ urban and industrial culture (the Campanha).

The history of Santa Thereza Village is linked to a peculiar figure: the Viscount of Ribeiro Magalhães, a man of great tenacity and remarkable entrepreneurial capacity who was able to build, in the ninetieth-century Campanha, an urban agglomeration that offered housing, culture, leisure and commerce to the craftsmen and their meat market. In this sense, Santa Thereza is more than an economic development; it has been a cultural utopia in the Campanha for more than a century.
 
The work to enhance and restore this historical ensemble was done by the Associação Pró Santa Thereza [1], sponsored by Brasken, Eletrobrás, Lojas Obino and Supermercados Peruzzo, with the support from the city of Bagé’s local government. The projects were conceived by architect Flávio Kiefer, who coordinated a multidisciplinary team.

[1] Headed by Ierecê Belmonte Moglia, Maria Luisa da Luz and Eliane Simões Pires.