Despite its designation as a UNESCO World Cultural Treasure and its reputation as a Spanish Colonial jewel, Cuenca is actually a city of Modernity. Each new epoch of the Modern World has left an indelible stain upon the city’s exquisite architectural streetscapes, a delightfully mottled veneer one could better describe as Eclecticism. Charged with the listing of Historic buildings and more, the Institute of Cultural Heritage (INPC), Ecuador's premier Conservation body, has a number of diverse projects on the go throughout Southern Ecuador. As well as restoring old mansions, they work on sites ranging from Nationally important rural Pre-Canari settlements to 'almost forgotten' Ateliers in the streets and laneways of cities like Cuenca.
The INPC employs an array of Specialists from Sociologists to paint technologists and their Cuenca headquarters, located naturally, in one of the most unique Mansions in the city, is a hub of activity. Visiting this old Mansion, I am transfixed by the elaborate murals of its original owner, Artist, Joaquin Rendon Araujo. In its heyday, the Institute’s headquarters was a modern and highly individualized family residence built about 1910 and boasting the latest in brass finishings and European wallpapers. Senor Rendon hand painted romantic landscapes and figures upon stairwells and walls. And he painted Doves, lots of them, hence the building’s name, House of the Doves – Casa de las Palomas. One of its most elaborate rooms overlooks Benigno Malo, and is floor to ceiling hand decorated pressed metal. Imagine High French Court meets Spanish Republican Adobe in far-flung empire.
I step off the footpath and enter Casa de las Palomas' zaguan, or entryway, cobbled with river stones and ox vertebra. In front of me, in stark contrast to the dark arcade, I am struck with the vision of a cheerful sunlit courtyard garden. I don’t know when this garden bed was laid out but the flowers thriving there are ones you’d expect in an English Cottage garden – Cosmos, Hollyhock, Rose and Jasmine: Sun worshippers every one of them!
From the ground floor of the Casa, I climb a solid wooden staircase that is decorated with a High Romantic Bavarian-like Pastoral narrative, to the next level. I take the second door and enter a large and airy ‘French Court’ style Salon. In this Artist’s folly of a house, I am enjoying the passing Colonial experience and the Vernacular of the Republican Era, as well as a little taste of La Belle Époque or the Age of Enlightenment. It’s a satisfying experience for a Décor devotee. From my perch, I applaud Senor Rendon, not for his Modernism but for his very proto-Postmodernism!
With his death in 1917, the Artist’s bohemian home began a long journey, passing through many hands, becoming in turn a casino, school, candle factory, drum factory and soft drink factory. I think it was a soft drink factory at the same time it housed the printing presses of el Diario del Sur, the Southern Daily. Oh, and for another short while, it was Senora Aurora Calle’s Inn.
By 1987, now rundown but with promise, the house attracted the attention of the Institute’s first Sub Director, Susana Gonzalez, who raised sufficient funds with the help of the Central Bank and the National Cultural Council, to buy the building for the INPC. Originally intended at that time to promote the study of Architectural Restoration, it has achieved that and more. Casa de las Palomas in the twenty-first century, is an Icon of Urban renewal. A visit to Ecuador’s Institute of Cultural Heritage has me thinking of how I can live and work from a more creative center where form and function serve each other well and perhaps like Senor Rendon, where form serves even that little bit more flamboyantly. His house has certainly proved to be a remarkably versatile building and a popular site for commerce, advocacy and residential life, and that for more than one hundred years!
(While it's not officially open to the public, you may get past the guard... it's on the east side of Benigno Malo between Juan Jaramillo and Presidente Cordova. Don't say I sent you!)
