The Heritage Conservation Society

http://news.inq7.net/lifestyle/index.php?index=2&story_id=64509&col=1

By Augusto Villalon

URBAN HERITAGE DOES NOT EXIST in a vacuum. Heritage buildings are part of daily life. Some are national monuments, others are buildings within an urban setting where people have lived for generations.

Although government-owned heritage building might be revered as part of national patrimony, they are also where bureaucrats work every day.

Religious buildings may be considered national heritage. But to the faithful, the structures are more than that. They are places where people practice their religion. They are places where priests and the religious live, work and pray.

An urban district might have high heritage value. But to its residents, it is where they live, work, shop, go to school, or relax.

Heritage integrates into the daily lives of people. It is an everyday part of life. Therefore, it is essential to involve the stakeholders in its conservation.

Successful conservation of heritage is achieved through a partnership between the public and private sectors, a relationship where the needs and expectations of both sides are understood and met.

Enlightened legislation is essential in protecting urban heritage. But the stakeholders must be included in each stage of the legislative process. When stakeholders feel they are part of the conservation process and are its beneficiaries, and when they are aware conservation legislation protects their rights and improves their quality of life, then they take ownership of their heritage and participate in its conservation.

In other urban centers of Asia, legislative protection of heritage has resulted in people’s dependency on government initiatives without any stakeholder participation. Such efforts have met with failure.

Walled City of Manila
Intramuros, the fortified center of Manila built by the Spanish in the mid-16th century, is the acknowledged national symbol of the Spanish colonial era that lasted almost 400 years. Until the early years of the 20th century, it was the government, religious, business, and residential center of Manila.

Heavily destroyed during World War II and the following years, the government founded the Intramuros Administration over 30 years ago to oversee reconstruction of the historic area.

It was the first urban area in the country with special conservation legislation, including strict architectural reconstruction guidelines implemented by a well-trained staff of historians and architects from the Intramuros Administration (IA).

The IA successfully reconstructed the war-damaged fortifications. It also built clusters of buildings in the Spanish colonial style that now house museums, shops, restaurants, and a small hotel. A few privately constructed buildings followed the Intramuros “style” for office and commercial use.

Intramuros is busy during the daytime, filling up with office workers and students from major universities in the area. However, at sundown everyone goes home. Then the area becomes a deserted ghost town.

Decades after the establishment of the IA, the rebuilding of the Walled City is far from complete. The plans did not envision encouraging structures that attract everyday life or encourage new residents to live in the quarter, nor did they encourage local residents to participate in the reconstruction of the heritage area.

Intramuros, principally regarded as a monument and therefore a tourist commodity, is a heritage island sadly not integrated into the everyday life of Manila.

Gota de Leche, FEU
Gota de Leche (Drop of Milk) is one of the oldest NGOs in the Philippines. Since its establishment in 1907, it has been distributing free milk to babies of needy families. It remains in the same building constructed in 1912, considered an important architectural landmark in the Philippines.

The organization restored its badly deteriorated heritage building in 2001 with unexpected results. The restored building has become a symbol of hope in the very congested University Belt neighborhood where Gota de Leche is located.

Residents noticed the restoration, as did former organization volunteers who, as a result of the new “image” of the Gota de Leche, renewed their commitment to the organization.

The once-forgotten organization has reestablished its position of respect with public and private leaders in the city.

A simple conservation program achieves unforeseen results. In 2003, Gota de Leche received the Unesco Asia-Pacific Cultural Heritage Award.

At the Far Eastern University in Manila, a campus-wide program to restore its Art Deco buildings built between 1939 and 1950 achieved astonishing and unexpected results. The conserved campus has since reestablished pride of place with students, faculty and alumni. People really felt good to be a part of FEU.

More important, the program initiated a private-public initiative for neighborhood revitalization. When restoration was completed, neighbors, noticing that their buildings needed improvement, grouped together and agreed on implementing simple measures such as cleaning sidewalks and repainting façades, leading to the organization of an association of neighborhood building and shop owners.

The first thing the association did was to make the mayor of Manila aware they had voluntarily improved the conditions of their street. Then they asked him to improve security, install street lighting, repair sidewalks, and improve other facilities, which the city government did because it saw how determined the local residents were to improve their neighborhood.

This is the first example in the Philippines where a heritage conservation project grew into a modest stakeholder improvement project that evolved into a public-private cooperation for urban revitalization.

The FEU conservation project won the Unesco Asia-Pacific Cultural Heritage Award in 2005. It is a good model to follow. It has all the qualities for success: stakeholder participation, government participation, and, most of all, it assures that the architectural heritage of Nicanor Reyes Street is preserved.

Feedback is welcome at afvillalon@hotmail.com

http://news.inq7.net/lifestyle/index.php?index=2&story_id=63783

By Augusto Villalon

(Conclusion)

CHINA
PASSIONATELY rejected the decaying heritage architecture in its old
cities, pulled them all down quickly for instant replacement with
towering structures.

However, after a decade of rapid expansion
and modernization, China has learned to value its architectural
heritage and to see to it that neighborhoods of old architecture have
an important place in modern China.

The old neighborhoods give
new China an identity, a link with the rich history of the Chinese
people, and a validation that, despite the highly modernized lifestyle
in Chinese cities today, the traditional living patterns as seen in old
houses remain applicable in today’s lifestyle.

In Shanghai, the
old houses in a traditional neighborhood were conserved and reused to
become today’s Xintandi, a widely successful entertainment-shopping
destination that combines old and new with stunning architectural
results. Financially the development is a success as well, proving that
money can, indeed, be earned from conservation.

Today it is one
of the most popular destinations for locals and tourists in the city, a
stellar example of how old architecture can continue to serve our 2006
lifestyle.

The Xintandi example, contrary to popular belief,
proves that conservation is progressive. It does not freeze a city and
its people in their past. Although conservation builds on the past, it
brings the city forward into the future, which is the rationale behind
the development of a successful heritage and development plan.

Freezing
residents into an old life pattern simply because they happen to live
in a heritage area goes against development goals. It prevents their
successful integration into the 21st century.

Usually residents
of heritage neighborhoods are forced to relocate. Their abandoned
houses become the nucleus of a redeveloped neighborhood that changes in
use from residential to commercial without considering that residents
have the right to benefit from neighborhood improvement.

During
the Xintandi recycling process, the attention was solely on conserving
and reusing the heritage structures without consideration for the
original residents who eventually were displaced. The Xintandi setting
was conserved at the expense of the original living pattern.

Conservation
practice today looks at conserving both the heritage structures and-as
much as possible-the original living pattern that had taken place
within them so that everyone would benefit-city, developers, and
resident stakeholders.

In considering the content of development
guidelines vis-…-vis conservation of heritage, there are guidelines
that illustrate various approaches to the issue.

A suggested reference list:

"The Venice Charter," International Council on Monuments and Sites (Icomos), Paris
"Historic Towns Charter," Icomos, Paris
"Vernacular Architecture Charter," Icomos, Paris
"The Burra Charter," Icomos, Australia
"Principles for the Conservation of Heritage Sites in China," The Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles, CA, USA
"Hoi An Charter," Unesco, Bangkok
"Preservation Districts for Groups of Historic Buildings in Kyoto," City Planning Bureau, Kyoto, Japan
"Yogyakarta Regulation about Building," Yogyakarta, Indonesia
"Ordinance #04, An Ordinance Enacting the Preservation and Conservation
Guidelines for Vigan Ancestral Houses," Vigan (World Heritage
Property), Philippines
"PD 1616, Rules and Regulations Governing the Development of Intramuros," Manila, Philippines
"Conservation Guidelines and Technical Supplements," Urban Redevelopment Authority of Singapore
"Maintaining Historic Buildings," National Parks Service (US), Department of the Interior
"Preparing a Historic Preservation Ordinance," Report No. 374, American Planning Association Advisory Service

The
time is right to begin thinking of development programs that are
sensitive to heritage conservation as a means of improving quality of
life and establishing a sense of pride of place among Filipinos. Such
programs may even result in the Filipino rediscovery of the excellence
of his culture, something so sadly lacking in the psyche of today’s
population.

And to bring everything into reality, why not a pilot
project to serve as a model to prove that it is possible for all
sectors to work together toward development and heritage conservation.

E-mail the author at afvillalon@hotmail.com

By Paulo Alcazaren
The Philippine STAR 01/21/2006

In
the late 1880s, Manila was considered the dirtiest city in the Far
East. Seeing the larger agglomeration of Metro Manila today, one may
make the same observation – except for a few spots maintained by
private developers or earmarked as "investor corridors" or "showcase
pilot projects" created in a seasonal show of cleanliness that cannot
be sustained. The change of regime under the Americans, however,
brought a change so complete that Manila cleaned itself up and became
the Pearl of the Orient.

To gain insight into this radical makeover, let me excerpt
from a 1905 article entitled "The Re-making of Manila" by Bradford
Daniels. The subhead was "Changing a pest-hole into a healthful and
beautiful Capital of Commerce of the East." Daniels wrote:

"When the Americans marched into Manila on August 23, 1898, it
was the filthiest place in the Orient; today it is one of the cleanest
cities east of the Suez (canal), and tourists who visit it pronounce it
the most attractive spot in the East. In six years it has been
transformed into a center of activity and enterprise."

Daniels pointed out that because of its attractiveness, the
city drew the adventurous and enterprising from America: "Restless
young (university) fellows (and lawyers) who felt that even in the
United States the world was moving too slow for them, physicians who
saw new worlds to conquer, engineers who sought to amass great fortune
quickly, merchants who dreamed that they saw profitable trade – these
and many others came to Manila… Thus came representative men …and the
accumulated knowledge and experience …was concentrated in a single city
as it has never been before."

This capacity that led to the betterment of the city was
exemplified in key civil servants like army surgeon Major E. C. Carter
who took on the task of addressing the sanitary problem of the city:
"With a sympathy that enables him to put himself in the other man’s
place, he undertook the education of the Filipino to better modes of
living in a way that has accomplished more in three years than (other
men may have) in a generation. The 226,000 inhabitants have been so
thoroughly vaccinated that smallpox has come to be insignificant;
cholera (was cut down to one thirtieth the deaths from previous
outbreaks); and with new water and sewage systems another outbreak of
the scourge within the city limits will be practically impossible.
Bubonic plague has been reduced to a minimum by inoculations, by
isolation in the San Lazaro Hospital, which is the finest and best
equipped building for infectious diseases in the East, and by the
relentless campaign against rats. Through these methods the death rate
in Manila has fallen far lower than some (large cities in the mainland
like Baltimore and New Orleans). …Plans for a civil hospital to cost
more than P1,000,000 (have been made)…"

This hospital was eventually built and is known today as the
Philippine General Hospital. Daniels continues with descriptions of
other infrastructure built to benefit the city: "In the harbor itself
600 acres are protected against the terrible typhoons by two massive
stone breakwaters extending nearly three miles. In the construction of
these great walls more than two million tons of stone have been used."

These harbor improvements led to the creation of the modern
port of Manila which, until the outbreak of hostilities in the Second
World War, was the best in the East and rivaling Shanghai and the
Japanese ports.

Daniels describes another important improvement, this time in
land transport. "But, of all the innovations, the street cars are the
dearest to the hearts of the Americans. The Manila Electric Light and
Railroad Company is spending more that five million dollars to supply
the city with transportation and light. The city will soon have a new
telephone system too. The streetcar company has employed native labor
from the first, and with eminently satisfactory results. It now has 50
miles of as fine a track as could be found anywhere and the line may be
extended around the head of Manila Bay to Cavite.

"The Meralco and PLDT have had their ups and downs but today
are institutions that still provide for people’s needs. Too bad the tranvias
are gone and the current LRT/MRT system is an incomplete and
uncoordinated system that is constantly playing catch-up with the
growing metropolis. As far back as a century ago there were already
plans to link Cavite with Manila via an efficient rail system. We are
truly a hundred years behind.

Daniels also highlighted the new parks that were being built
or planned for the city (according to the Daniel Burnham master plan of
1905): "Near (the southern edge of the city – today’s Harrison Park)
there will be a pleasure park such as can be found nowhere else in the
Orient; and on Sundays the people may enjoy an outing through one of
the finest section of (countryside in the archipelago)."

Too bad Harrison Park was sold to private developers and we
lost the only opportunity south of the city to build a much needed
park.

Feedback is welcome. Please e-mail the writer at paulo.alcazaren@gmail.com

http://news.inq7.net/lifestyle/index.php?index=2&story_id=63048

By Augusto Villalon

First of two parts

AWARENESS
AND COOPERATION ARE most important considerations when initiating a
legal framework that successfully integrates architectural heritage
with development policies.

All sectors, public and private, must
be aware of the particular architectural heritage of the city and their
joint responsibility to conserve it. They must be aware of the
uniqueness of their heritage, of the benefits conservation will bring
to the people and to their city.

Most important, both sectors must have the same clear picture of how the integration of the new with the old can be achieved.

Cooperation
comes hand in hand with awareness. Conservation of heritage and
national development are primarily for the benefit of the people. They
improve the quality of life.

Therefore, to achieve them, there must be joint participation of the public and private sectors.

It
does not really matter whether government or stakeholders initiate the
development program. What matters is that the stakeholders are involved
in the program to the point of assuming "ownership," thus assuring
their commitment and participation toward the success of the program.

In
many foreign examples, government-initiated programs implemented
without stakeholder participation have largely been failures.
Conservation programs by the City of Manila and the Intramuros
Administration are perfect examples.

For an overview of the
heritage that is to be conserved, we should look at its total scope.
Heritage consists of tangible and intangible manifestations that
express the individuality of a culture.

Tangible expressions are
architecture, townscapes, cityscapes, painting, sculpture and
traditional craft. Intangible expressions are music, dance, literature,
cuisine and much more.

After considering the total range of the
tangible and intangible, we see that cultural heritage defines the
unique qualities of a people, giving them an identity that sets them
apart in today’s globalized world.

The architecture and
urbanscapes are simply one part of the entire cultural heritage
picture-the spaces where cultural activities take place. However,
neither heritage nor architecture exists in a vacuum. They are part of
human life.

Therefore, we should ideally plan on conserving
architectural heritage, including the other tangible and intangible
aspects that take place within the architectural envelope. We are
conserving the total heritage picture.

Identity

What
would the Philippines be without its language, music, dance, sculpture,
cuisine and other facets of its culture? Its heritage is what gives the
country an identity. Without it, the Philippines could easily be
mistaken for any other country in the world.

To keep the
Philippines standing out as unique among other cultures existing in the
world today, it is therefore essential to conserve all aspects of its
heritage, not only the architectural and urban, as part of a national
development strategy that sees the importance of total heritage picture
to establish a national image.

Conservation of heritage is essential in nation-building.

In
nation-building, we are concerned with the hardware, with the
measurable. We tally GNP, currency reserves, kilometers of new
highways, increased electrical power supply, new airports, number of
tourist arrivals, hotels, and so on.

However, to make the gains
from improved hardware relevant, they must result in improving the life
of the people. Which is where the software takes over.

Software
is psychic, not measurable. It consists of inputs resulting in an
improved quality of life-comfortable cities, vibrant entertainment,
museums that excite people, festivals and other aspects that make life
more pleasant for everyone. After all, what good is achieving all the
hardware if life remains the same?

In most cities today, many do
not like old buildings. They prefer to replace them with new
structures. A popular belief exists around the globe that we must
destroy the past to move forward, that the past symbolizes an era of
darkness, of ignorance, poverty and oppression.

That rationale justifies the continued destruction of what remains of the fragile architectural heritage in many cities.

The
new buildings built on the debris of the old are seen to be symbols of
having stepped out of the Dark Ages into the 21st century. They are the
shining skyscrapers of progress, but not necessarily architecture as
good as what they replaced.

Today people realize that skyscrapers
are not really the signs of progress as once thought. Hong Kong and
Singapore relentlessly built skyscraper after skyscraper over the
skeletons of their heritage buildings.

After a few decades of
construction, they realized that memory had been erased from their
cities, that local residents were looking to revive their connections
with the past, and that the special identity of their cities was close
to disappearing.

To correct the situation, the Urban
Redevelopment Authority of Singapore identified heritage neighborhoods,
set guidelines for their conservation. It either purchased blocks of
houses for conservation by the Ura or offered assistance to private
property-owners who wished to conserve their houses.

The lesson
to learn from Singapore is that the legislation did not focus on
single, stand-alone heritage properties, but instead on conserving
groups of houses or entire neighborhood settings.

Setting gives
more relevance to conserving architectural heritage. It encourages a
continuation of the living patterns that may have existed within the
neighborhood.

To be continued

E-mail the author at afvillalon@hotmail.com

By Paulo Alcazaren
The Philippine STAR 01/07/2006

I
am still receiving e-mails and phone calls about the piece I did on the
UP Chapel. Apparently many alumni and fellow professors share the view
that it has lost its clean and green setting. But I will get back to
that later. This week, we venture nearby to another campus and another
ecclesiastical edifice of note – this time, not threatened by aesthetic
abuse or lack of funds for maintenance.

The Church of the Gesu on the campus of the Ateneo de Manila
University is now a landmark for the Jesuit school. Its pointy peak and
cross are visible from the traffic-infested, overhead bridge-challenged
Katipunan Avenue. Recently, the church’s silhouette has been made more
elegant with the addition of a new 19-bell carillon. High-flying
Atenistas now pursue academic and gimmick goals bajo las campañas (under the bells).

The church is a modernist take on a long line of Jesuit
churches that have their origins in the original Gesu in Rome. The
Ateneo has had several of these churches starting with the one
destroyed in Intramuros. The campus in Loyola, to which the school
moved after the Second World War, was also a modern remake of a
formerly urban campus with wide, open and green spaces (undefiled by
telephone and power cables, which the original planners – thank God –
buried underneath).

The Ateneo chose the firm of Recio+Casas to design the new
Gesu. Bong Recio, the principal in charge, is an alumnus. He took pains
to study the site to find the best geometry and location for the
building. The striking design was unlike anything seen since another
geometric wonder (the UP dome by Leandro Locsin) was constructed 50
years earlier. The angle-roofed structure is an abstraction of a bird
in flight (an eagle, of course) and is perched on a slight knoll with a
large "sunken" quad in front of it – perfect siting for prominence
despite the structure’s relatively small size.

It’s not how large the church is that counts, it’s how
appropriately configured the space is inside. Here, Recio is eminently
efficient and stylish. Less is really more in this structure. It
eschews frills, is airy and cool in addition to being dramatic from all
angles.

The drama, however, was a little off, or so I thought when I
first saw the church in late 2002. The composition seemed to lack
something and (I later found out) it was the carillon that had to wait
until now to be built. Additional funds were raised (by High School
Class ’60 and College ’64) in the interim and happily, the carillon,
also designed by Recio+Casas, was finally built last year and
inaugurated in October.

The tall white bell tower is separate from the main structure
and balances its geometry carefully. It houses 18 bells and an Angelus
bell that now gives students and passersby notice of events, masses and
hours of prayer. The 18 bells are named, following an old liturgical
tradition, after the Blessed Trinity, saints and the blessed. Jesus,
Mary, Joseph and the Holy Saints above! This carillon rocks!

I visited one late afternoon to find it constantly visited by
students and staff. The evening brought a Mass, and outside the church
its new carillon glowed, enhanced by heavenly chimes. How I wish my own
campus would take as much effort at sustaining an ideal setting for
academic and other pursuits.

Ateneo, as with UP and Miriam, is threatened externally by encroaching
urban blight, uncoordinated infrastructure, billboard mania and
unfriendly streets and avenues. I hope we do not lose Ateneo’s (and
Miriam’s) picturesque look and whatever is left of UP Diliman to lack
of planning or deficiencies in urban design.

Finally for this week I’d just like to reprint two of the correspondence I received on the UP Chapel.

Dear Mr. Alcazaren,

I am Fiel Dalangin, a senior student of the UST College of
Architecture. Two points struck me in your "Chapel of Sacrifice." The
first is the building technology of the chapel and second the
architecture of UP that made the image.

The thin shell construction applied in the UP Chapel was a
breakthrough at the time. I think it only shows that the buildings we
have now and even the most sophisticated ones are products of past
buildings in our history. Buildings evolve as different ingenuities and
different needs arise.

A history professor once told me that the primary way to
understand the buildings of today is to understand history. It is a sad
truth that history is not given much importance.

For me, UP’s golden age in architecture was during the first
three decades after it was transferred to Diliman. It was the period
when buildings stood as ideas of a state university, a place made. What
is happening to the campus is a product of economic and political
starvation. Both virtual and physical image suffer. I believe that
those who don’t understand architecture as an idea of place-making are
not sensitive to its importance.

It is up to us architects and planners to continue to find
ways and solutions for architectural problems even if bound by other
problems.

From a balikbayan, this excerpt and commentary on what has happened to the UP Chapel:

About the ravaging of the UP Chapel’s landscape by someone
who ran amok – was he the same person responsible for renaming Delaney
Hall "Tambayan" or something?

I haven’t seen the disaster site recently, but I hope the
chapel site is not another victim of the concrete-basketball-court
syndrome afflicting most of our provincial churches, with their
beautiful acacia trees cut and their spacious grounds paved with
cement.  I dread to see the scene of the crime at Diliman.

A continuing crime is indeed happening to the UP Chapel. I
wish I could make a citizen’s arrest to put a stop to its
deterioration, but who’s to be arrested? Thankfully, I hear that some
UPSCAN alumni are trying to find a way to bring the chapel back. Let’s
hope this happens soon.

Feedback is welcome. Please e-mail the writer at paulo.alcazaren@gmail.com.

http://news.inq7.net/lifestyle/index.php?index=2&story_id=62349
By Augusto Villalon

THE
START OF THE YEAR IS the time to take stock of the heritage situation,
to see where our heritage journey has reached, and to see whether it is
arriving at its destination.

Not many thought of heritage
conservation in the far-off 1980s when people believed that cultural
heritage shackled us to a dark past. Old architecture held
neighborhoods and towns from progress, they believed.

Progress
demanded replacing the old with the new, building anew over the debris
of the old. The cycle of destruction took away many outdated cultural
practices that were rapidly abandoned and replaced with the new.

Progress
and embracing new ideas are essential to the growth of a society.
However, respecting the past is vital in keeping the thread of national
continuity alive no matter the march of modernization.

There has
been a change of attitudes since then. Conservation issues, the Jai
Alai and Arroceros Forest Park demolitions, have become rallying
points, making more people aware of their heritage. Now in many agendas
is the preservation and revival of Philippine culture-from architecture
to festivals, dances, literature, and so much more.

Student correspondence

Letters
received recently from students at the University of Santo Tomas prove
that the youth is moving into the front lines of conservation.

Mary
Shella Senga comments on the revival of the traditional Misa de Gallo
procession in the Parian of Cebu that ushered in the city’s Christmas
season last month.

"The Parian of Cebu is the symbol of change or
modernization, but at the same time, (of) saving the culture and
traditions that were once experienced by many… Kaguikan sa Parian
shows that Cebuanos will always be proud of their heritage and they
would always keep in their hearts and minds what they had before
(while) coping with the 21st century."

Quennie Chiu says that
since she has become aware of conservation, she has "learned more about
our culture and (the) heritage of our country."

Jomar Bautista
writes that "your column opened our eyes to one of the vital reasons
why we (students) should continue to strive to be architects: to
reestablish and revive structures that pay homage to Philippine culture
and the arts. You also made us see places we failed to recognize as
part of our heritage, allowing us to think that these places are part
of our culture… "

Jansen Alias writes, "You have reminded me of
some of the things that we sometimes are forgetting to consider in
architecture, such as environment and heritage, which directly affect
us… neglecting them could be detrimental (to) designing an efficient
building that would hinder the growth and lives of people in it."

He
continues, "Our country is facing different types of challenges today
in different fields, including architecture. Really, there is much to
be done in order to make more Filipinos realize the unique pride of
place in different regions of the archipelago. I believe that as
Filipinos, each of us have our own duty to serve our nation that is
rich in heritage and treasures. You have featured how each province
boasts of a natural or architectural wonder, which is great and really
something to be proud of.

"Just as you wrote in some of your
articles (Carcar, Cebu), I found out that nothing is impossible if only
all of us, i.e. government, citizens, church, NGOs, etc., would get our
act together toward one common goal."

Everyone’s duty

From
Johnus Mirazol come these observations, "I have become an enthusiast of
architectural conservation and preservation. I think it is good that
even though we are in a period of constructing smart, grand and
high-rise structures, we still give importance to the glorious past and
history that we have."

Mirazol continues: "Buildings and historic
places are non-living entities, but these are mirrors expressing a rich
culture and history… but (they) will definitely stand in time, even
for centuries, and these witnesses will tell us of the affluent culture
and patrimony that was handed to us by our forefathers."

"I hope
that there will come a time that architectural heritage conservation
and preservation will be the duty (not only) of the few, but of all.
It’s not yet too late to start rebuilding what we have lost, for that
is the only way that we would be able to start the foundation of our
future."

Another UST Architecture student, Julius Marzan, writes
that articles published on this column provide readers the "information
on what’s going on in different places in and out of the country," the
"historical significance" of structures, and the "need for (their)
conservation."

"I am also glad that the cultural importance is
pointed out in your articles, which hopefully would boost the
enthusiasm of Filipinos (so that they could) improve and beautify the
wealth of our culture, especially in places which we can be proud of."

Marzan
expresses the hope to develop the "heart for our nation and the
motivation in conserving and preserving important structures and places
which signify the past; (this would) help shape a better future for the
Filipinos."

As the student letters show, we have come quite a way
since the 1980s in the quest to preserve our heritage. With the growing
involvement of the youth, rediscovering and protecting our heritage
will become a national priority sooner than we expect.

E-mail the author at afv@hotmail.com