Hotel internacional dos Reis Magos: quais os obstáculos à sua conservação?

Abstract

This research, whose object of study is the Reis Magos International Hotel in Natal/RN, an important example of the modernist architecture in the state, arises from debates that emerged during the professional performance of the author together with the Superintendence of the Historical Heritage Institute and National Artistic in the State of Rio Grande do Norte (IPHAN/RN), in the years 2013 and 2014. In 2013, the local press widely divulged the intention of the hotel owner to demolish it to build a new shopping and hotel center in that local. Faced with this possibility, entities and social groups mobilized in order to prevent this action. The Institute of Friends of Cultural Heritage and Citizenship (IAPHACC) requested the Foundation for the Arts (FUNCARTE), the José Augusto Foundation (FJA) and the IPHAN/RN, municipal, state and federal preservation bodies, respectively, the protection of edification, which with almost twenty years of abandonment, was in the process of being ruined. Faced with the tension generated by the possibility of demolition or conservation, and by widening the discussion about what should be their destination, several arguments began to reverberate, mainly through the local press, which practically transformed the narrative of the hotel, in a daily leaflet. And it is from these discussions that the question of this research arises: What are the obstacles to the conservation of the Reis Magos International Hotel? The objective is to analyze the arguments of the main actors involved in this narrative and to make the obstacles to the conservation of the hotel emerge, to foment the discussion that certainly will not provide operational answers, but it can indicate ways to overcome them.