PUERTO
RICO 1900
Turn-of-the-Century Architecture in the Hispanic Caribbean 1890-1930
by Jorge Rigau
Preface by Leon Krier
Rizzolli, 1992
ISBN 0-8478-1400-9
ISBN 0-8478-1430-0 (pbk.)
PREFACE
This book is not a record of things past; it is a manual for building civilized towns and villages in Puerto Rico in the past, in the present, and in the future. Jorge Rigau is not a historiographer, because he believes that these documents contain essential information for technicians, planners, and architects of today. He is not a writer of records; he little cares about the age of those streets, squares, and buildings, exactly because their dates of design and construction, their heritage line-so central to a conscientious historian's work and raison d'être --are largely irrelevant and at best marginal information when seen in the light of their timeless usefulness as containers of urban life and social drama. Their quality and charm lie not in their ancienneté but in the beauty of their proportions and the quality of their dimensions, in the efficacy of their composition and construction methods. These are not only vastly different and superior to all that environmental garbage which in the name of progress was unloaded onto Puerto Rico in the past decades, but they represent the very material which makes the island a civilized country, a homeland to long for, to be proud to come from and to return to. It is these ideas and things which make Puerto Rico different from other islands and countries. Rigau describes and draws without sentimentality the characteristics of this cultural difference and identity. He is not an ethnographer but a true patriot evidencing all those profound values without which Puerto Rico would be but a nowhere, without which Puerto Rico has gone strictly nowhere for too long. Even though all these documents are of immense value for restoration and conservation purposes, Rigau situates them well above the limitations of the current heritage industry. They represent indeed a blueprint for a civilized future.
Leon Krier
LONDON, 1991
Caribbean and Global Links /
Architecture /
Urban /
History /
Publications /
Organizations /
Contacts
