Baguio historical map launched

COMMUNITY BILLBOARD

LJ Reyes

BAGUIO CITY -- The Alumni Association of Baguio Japanese School together with Filipino-Japanese Foundation of Northern Luzon, Inc. and Japanese Association in Northern Luzon, Inc. launched “Baguio Historical Walk Art Map” here Wednesday at Mt. Cloud Bookshop.

This cultural map is a back-to-back map. The first map shows the buildings and establishments in Baguio in the 1930’s so they called it the “Map of Nostalgia”. The other map shows the present places in Baguio City they called “Map of the Future”.

They started planning the map nine months ago with the help of two Fine Arts students from the University of the Philippines-Baguio. Rochelle Bakisan, illustrator of the 1930’s map, said she took a hard time designing it because she needed a lot of researches and needed to see old photos of the old buildings in Baguio City. Her struggle in finding old pictures is that some of these were pixelated.

 Kyle Vizcara, “Map of the Future” illustrator, said it was more challenging for him because he needed to travel to different places in Baguio City to see new places and old buildings that were preserved.

The map aims to preserve the variable things in Baguio City that other cities don’t have. It is also aims to make young Baguio people recognize old infrastructures that are not existing anymore.

The makers of the map believe that developers of the city thought more of tourism and disregarded the city’s heritage. They added  as developers construct new buildings, they destroy Baguio’s heritage.

Baguio Historical Walk Art Map is now distributed in Mt. Cloud Bookshop and open for purchase.