Overview of the lounge and bar at Entre Camadas, a space featured in the 32nd edition of CASACOR Bahia, at Casa Nossa Senhora das Mercês. Photo: Courtesy of Michele Wharton.

Space designed by Michele Wharton and Dayse Pellegrini joins 32nd edition of showcase, housed at Casa Nossa Senhora das Mercês in Salvador under theme “Mind and Heart”

SALVADOR, Brazil. A space called Entre Camadas debuts at CASACOR Bahia 2026, a showcase featuring 45 architecture, interior design and landscaping spaces at Casa Nossa Senhora das Mercês on Avenida Sete de Setembro. Designed by architects Michele Wharton and Dayse Pellegrini, the project offers a reading on memory, ancestry and Afro-Brazilian spirituality, with a bar as the experience’s core and a gallery dedicated to the orixás at the end of the route. The showcase runs from July 7 to Sept. 6.

Showcase: 32nd Edition in Historic Mansion

Held for the second consecutive year at Casa Nossa Senhora das Mercês, CASACOR Bahia reaches its 32nd edition between July 7 and Sept. 6. The 18th-century mansion, predominantly neo-Gothic in style, operated as a convent and school for 125 years until closing in 2022 amid a financial crisis. Reopened to the public by the showcase in 2025, the building once again hosts architecture and design interventions in 2026.

Established as one of the country’s leading showcases for architecture, art and design, the event brings together 45 spaces this year signed by more than 50 professionals, including 20 newcomers. CASACOR Bahia Director Magali Santana said the presence of so many new names shows that Bahia’s architecture and design scene remains lively and vibrant, without leaving aside professionals already established in the showcase.

Coordinated by architect David Bastos, the edition’s master plan also includes interventions on the mansion’s verandas and in its former chapel. Under the theme “Mind and Heart,” the general curatorship invites professionals and visitors to treat the house as a space for healing and self-care, in contrast to a landscape of hyperconnectivity and life edited by social media.

Gastronomy also forms part of the exhibition circuit. Designed by stylist and chef Carol Barreto, the main restaurant shares space with a Japanese operation by Paula Risério and Marco Reis, while the café and the building’s dome fall under the curatorship of Pedro Chezzi.

Two Paths, One Authorship

Born from the encounter between presence, memory and belonging, the authorship of Entre Camadas rests on the complementarity of two architects shaped by distinct Afro-diasporic experiences. Michele Wharton, from São Paulo with Panamanian ancestry, builds atmospheres and sensory experiences in her projects, weaving together welcome, identity and permanence.

Architects Michele Wharton (left) and Dayse Pellegrini designed the “Entre Camadas” space at CASACOR Bahia 2026. Photo: Courtesy of Michele Wharton.

Founded by Wharton herself, Casa Reina operates as a curatorial platform dedicated to giving visibility to Afro-Latino and Indigenous artists, and it is there that she consolidates a language treating space as an extension of memory and ancestry.

Dayse Pellegrini, meanwhile, is from Bahia and develops an architecture guided by the integration of nature, ancestry and Afro-Brazilian aesthetics. According to the architect, her work seeks to create spaces that translate belonging, sophistication and cultural identity, starting from Bahia as territory that is both lived and symbolic.

Together, the two authors describe the space as a crossing between memory, affection, nature, spirituality and identity, an idea that also explains the name chosen for the project.

Bar as the Project’s Heart

At the center of the space, the bar takes on the role of the project’s heart, organizing the CASACOR experience as a place of pause, celebration and permanence. Suspended above the area, light blue fabrics form a sky in motion, evoking the luminosity, sea and lightness associated with Salvador’s landscape.

A bamboo structure frames the bar at Entre Camadas, the focal point of the space designed by Michele Wharton and Dayse Pellegrini. Photo: Courtesy of Michele Wharton.

In dialogue with that palette, Azul Puro, the color of the year chosen by Tintas Coral, acts as a sensory extension of water and infinity throughout the space. Tropical vegetation crosses the space as a living force, bringing the interior closer to the sensory memory of Bahia’s capital: the heat, humidity, exuberance and immediate warmth of the local landscape.

Tropical plants and handcrafted furniture adorn the lounge leading to the bar. Photo: Courtesy of Michele Wharton.

Between matter and symbol, the presence of Iemanjá is evoked as an axis of contemplation in the space, introducing a dimension of reverence tied to water, femininity, protection and return.

A painting evokes Iemanjá in an illuminated niche within the space, a focal point for contemplation linked to water, protection, and return.Photo: Courtesy of Michele Wharton.

Gallery Presents Contemplative Reading on the Orixás

Located at the back of the space, Galeria Casa Reina opens a second chapter of the experience with the exhibition Espelho dos Orixás, inspired by Dique do Tororó, a set of sculptures dedicated to Candomblé deities and one of the city’s main symbols.

Azul Puro is hosting the Casa Reina Gallery, which is featuring the exhibition Espelho dos Orixás, inspired by the Tororó Dam. Photo: Courtesy of Michele Wharton.

Contemplative in tone, the exhibition proposes a reflection on ancestry and cultural permanence, evoking the orixás as forces that cross time, body and territory. Wrapped in the same Azul Puro present throughout the rest of the space, the gallery creates an immersive atmosphere geared toward contemplation and inward reflection.

More than a color, blue structures the gallery experience and reinforces the idea of depth and reflection that guides the entire exhibition. Unlike the lounge that precedes it, this second space takes on a more curatorial character, in which art and Afro-diasporic expression manifest as layers of thought and permanence.

Curated by Michele Wharton, Galeria Casa Reina features exhibition design developed jointly with Dayse Pellegrini. The show’s installation brings together the work of Aless Teixeira, Fernando Necko and Marcos Cabuloso.

Rounding out the exhibition’s artist roster are Aless Teixeira, Antônio Pulquerio, Dex Almeida, Fernando Necko, Gabriella Marinho, José Adario, Leonel Mattos, Lia Khey, Lumumba, Marcos Cabuloso, Negrito, Ogbá Art, Raimundo Bida, Regiz Francisco and Rhay.

Bahia as an Internal Experience

Once the route ends, Entre Camadas presents a Bahia understood as an internal experience: luminous and dense, rustic and sacred, in which living and remembering cease to be opposites and begin to coexist.

For the architects, the project does not aim only to represent mind and heart, the central theme of CASACOR’s 2026 edition, but to reveal that both are built in layers, an idea that sums up the two authors’ joint proposal and gives the space its name.

Visitor Information

Exhibition: Entre Camadas, part of CASACOR Bahia 2026
Dates: Through Sept. 6
Location: Casa Nossa Senhora das Mercês, Avenida Sete de Setembro, Salvador, Bahia
Instagram: @casacor_bahia