Leave stones to their natural color, architect asks

DO NOT alter nature - not even the colors it had assigned to pebbles, stones and rocks.

“Let the stones’ natural colors be,” advised former city architect Joseph Alabanza. He’s the same aging Baguio boy and former presidential assistant who also frowns each time a high-rise building is put up to further obliterate the city’s skyline.

The advice may well be for politicians of any color, some of whom had their names painted white on river stones and rocks, and on Baguio’s dwindling limestone formations, obviously to enhance voters’ recall of their names in the elections.

To some, this act of vandalism boomeranged, as some voters retaliated by omitting such names of wannabes in their ballots.

Alabanza’s call, however, is directed to well-meaning barangay leaders and residents who turn to stones that they line up on street sides and jurisdictional boundaries to enrich the pattern, harmony and tranquility of their community’s gardens, projects and borders.

“I hope we stop changing the stones’ natural colors,” Alabanza said Wednesday noon. He noted the practice of painting them is contrived, an affront to authenticity.

The best thing is to scrub them clean of moss, soot and dirt so their original hues would emerge, he stressed.

That’s why, he said, the stone base of the facades of the City Hall and the Baguio City National High School were spared of paint brush, to bring to the fore the beauty and unique color and grains of Baguio stone.

“Maymayat no baybay-an tayo ti natural nga kolor to bato,” he appealed. (Ramon Dacawi)