BACOLOD CITY – Plazas in this capital city and third district of Negros Occidental curated by landscape architect and environmental planner Paulo Alcazaren are featured in an exhibit at the Negros Museum here.
LANDSCAPE architect and environmental planner Paulo Alcazaren speaks during the opening of his exhibit dubbed ‘Places of Memory, Places of the Heart: Plazas in the Philippines’ at the Negros Museum in Bacolod City on Thursday, April 25. (Photo courtesy of Negros Occidental Rep. Kiko Benitez Facebook)
Dubbed “Places of Memory, Places of the Heart: Plazas in the Philippines,” the exhibit was unveiled at the JGM Gallery inside the Negros Museum on Thursday, April 25.
Alcazaren visited the province a few months ago to survey the towns and cities for the exhibit, which included notable plazas here as well as the third district cities and towns of Talisay, Silay, Victorias, E.B Magalona, and Murcia.
The exhibit also features plazas from Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao, which highlight the history and trajectory of town and city plazas in the country as documented by the curator over the last 15 years.
Each visit gave him an opportunity to record the remaining heritage of plazas, their current landscapes, and remaining structures and monuments.
The exhibit showcased that plazas have been the locus of communal celebrations as well as other social and political events in the country for over 400 years. This important urban space has devolved especially in the last century.
Plazas have fallen prey to pressures of population and economic growth as well as their attendant consequences of urban densification and pressures from private real-estate development.
Alcazaren said that car-centric city planning and leisure patterns focusing on consumption have marginalized public plazas.
He noted that in the past few decades, plazas have lost their place in people’s lives. “We must remember that plazas are life,” he said.
Alcazaren said that this presentation will highlight the history and present state of plazas, as well as how people could relearn the art of building humane towns and cities to enable them to pass this on to future generations better than when they were inherited.
Through this exhibit, people can appreciate the spatial aspects of the heritage, as well as the significance of conserving whole sites and not just the buildings, he said.
The exhibit is part of the Filipino Heritage Festival Inc. (FHFI) 2024 National Heritage Month Celebration in May. It will run from April 25 to July 31.