La Casa Blanca Hotel, Vigan

Adaptive re-use of the Syquia Building c.1927 into a Hotel along the heritage street of Calle Crisologo in Vigan, Ilocos Sur, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This building is only one of the many properties around Vigan that was owned by the Syquia family.  
 
The Syquia building was built in 1927 during the American colonial period originally as a shophouse wherein merchants traded goods at the ground floor and lived in the 2nd floor. This is a unique typology in the city of Vigan where most of the buildings in the Heritage city are family homes. 
 
The building has art Deco elements as seen in its ventanillas and hand painted patterns in the ceiling. 

The challenges for this project are very technical and demand precision. As an earthquake prone area with original foundations that are soft and shallow, the team had to design a new structural framing system that would do two things: one, support the original walls and two, hold up the new floors within. When we first visited the site back in 2017, the place was in a sorry state of disrepair and for decades, a Balete tree had been growing unencumbered from one of the wells inside the building, penetrating and damaging the walls surrounding it. 
  Documentation was very important as the team had to re-install the original floor boards and recreate architectural elements. A team of Heritage Conservation specialists was commissioned to document the elements of the building as per UNESCO Heritage standards before construction to make sure nothing of historical significance was missed. There was beauty in the details of the original structure corroded by time and these details needed to be uncovered and mended. It was both a journey of discovery and a mission of revitalization. 
 
On November 5, 2022, La Casa Blanca opened its doors to guests.