INSPIRED by Cebuano culture and heritage, watercolor artist and architecture graduate Dr. Kiyoko Yamaguchi, came all the way from Kyoto, Japan, to have her very first book launching and exhibit opening at Casa Gorordo Museum last April 7.
The University of San Carlos Press officially launched Poblacion Houses in Cebu: Urban Architecture in the American Colonial Period by Yamaguchi. The book, based on Yamaguchi’s doctoral dissertation, documents the development of urban transformation and the plans and designs of structures built before and after the administrative transition from the Spanish era to the American colonial rule in the Philippines. The book explores the significant changes in time and the role that architecture played.
The book is divided into three chapters. It begins with a general discussion of Spanish ideas and practices up to the urban personal space in the American period. It contains the author’s watercolor sketches of ancestral houses, churches and other marks embossed by the Spaniards and Americans on Philippine urban architecture, primarily in the municipal domain.
Yamaguchi first learned to draw buildings when she studied architecture and applied her learnings in her comprehensive studies that led her to her doctoral dissertation. She decided to draw historical houses during her fieldwork in Cebu rather than taking photos.
“Drawing makes me remember the details. In photos, I can’t look at the details that much,” she said.
According to her, the conflict she encountered while conducting the study is not having any first-hand information about ancestral houses as their original owners no longer lived there. The following day, April 8, Yamaguchi had her book lecture at the La Maison Rose / Alliance Francaise de Cebu. Eula L. Talisic