THE sweltering heat may be unstoppable, but our fiery hearts burned hotter than the summer sun.
Despite the blazing temperature outside, 63 Ilonggo and Bacoleño architects, as well as 25 assistants and members of the United Architects of the Philippines (UAP) Student Auxiliary-Iloilo Science and Technology University Chapter, came together on May 10, 2024, to celebrate the 2024 National Heritage Month with the theme “Championing Heritage: Capacity Building to Transform Communities” with a lively symposium and local heritage tour.
The event, hosted by the Iloilo Bahandi Chapter of UAP, was made possible with the support of the Iloilo City Government, led by the Honorable Mayor Jerry Treñas, and technical assistance from the National Museum of the Philippines, through the UAP’s Sentro ng Arkitekturang Filipino. In attendance were UAP Regional District C4 Director Harold Tating, City Councilor Frances Grace Parcon-Torres, Ar. Niña Maiquez, executive director of Sentro ng Arkitekturang Filipino, and UAP Iloilo Bahandi Chapter President Carlo John Debaja.
Participants tour the Jaro Metropolitan Cathedral and its iconic belfry, declared as a National Historical Landmark in 1984. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
Three competent and passionate speakers shared their insights and knowledge during the symposium. Ar. Regina Corteza-Gregorio, city architect of Iloilo, recounted the “Struggles and Strategies in Heritage Preservation in Iloilo City.” Ar. Bernadette Balaguer, senior researcher of the National Museum of the Philippines, gave an “Introduction to Disaster Risk Management for Cultural Heritage.” Ar. Jayson Braza Portem, deputy executive director of Sentro ng Arkitekturang Filipino, talked about the topic, “Feel Mo? Role of Place Making in Conservation.”
Legacy tour
The event was held at the former Iloilo Provincial Jail, now known as the National Museum of Western Visayas. The roughened feel of the building’s cold, white walls pointed to a more sobering time, a period when this place once housed incarcerated individuals for almost a century. Its predisposed stigma has stayed on even after it was decommissioned. It was not until the local government actively sought its restoration that the building was retrofitted and redeveloped into a museum.
This is an example of adaptive re-use, wherein an existing building is reused for a purpose other than which it was originally built or designed for. This process is the exact, same template of many other heritage sites around the country. These iconic buildings are monuments of the most tangible physical link between our past, present and future. Preserving them would never be a futile, thankless task. Heritage is what connects communities to their origins, rooting them in their “sense of place,” their shared identity, and will be the driving force to stimulate collective action for sustainable economic growth.
After the symposium and open forum, the participants were led on a rolling tour to various historic sites within the heart of the City of Love. The tour included the old business center and its archetypal buildings, mansions of a bygone era, various cathedrals, and the new business district. This truly led many, if not all, of us to ponder their former glory and the blood and sweat behind all that magnificence.
This day has opened our eyes to the struggle every cultural worker and advocate faces, but it has also opened a new door of possibilities into another underexplored field, one truly fitting for those willing to have a romance with the past.
Be the first to comment