Cuqui Batista His name is Francisco Manuel Batista Bisonó. He is 99 or 101 years old, depending on the date of birth or the date of registration in the registry, and he lives in Santiago in a house without baseboards, doors or windows, beams or plaster.
It is an airy house, with natural light and independent environments, as original as its author and as creative as his wife, the artist. Rosa Idalia García. (With whom, by the way, he has been arguing for 60 years about how coffee is brewed. With Architect Batista it may not be easy to reach agreements.)
The XII Biennale of Architecturecurrently displayed at the Museum of Modern Art, is dedicated to his professional life’s work. A architect what was going for lawyer and he got hooked on lines, sketches and constructions.
What is your style? Nobody better than him to describe it: “It depends on what is needed; I look for solutions“.
Nothing is conventional in Cuqui Batista. Neither his house nor his age, his fun conversation, nor his ability to plan for the future. Now he is interested in presenting some ideas to reformulate Tokyo at the Japanese Embassy. And a complaint: he doesn’t have a project in hand at the moment “because they don’t call me.”
That the XII Biennale of Architecture He was not surprised: “The only thing I was interested in was knowing who would say it because I have a lot of people against me, enemies that I have freely earned because I don’t look for problems with anyone.”
Author of projects as emblematic as the Roxy Building, the Palace of Fine Arts, the Fire Station in Santiagothe first PUCMM campus or the Ciudad Ganadera stadium, among many others, he does not highlight any of them as the most important of his career:
- “The next one is the one that matters, always the next one, because each era demands different solutions“.
Urbanizations of his authorship, such as Los Jardines, have drawn the plan of the Santiago today. But in your opinion…”Santiago It’s growing badly.”
“There is no style, but there are solutions for the time, for the specific demand, for the need”Architect
The beginnings
“I thought it could be lawyerbecause the court was behind my house, here in Santiagoon 16 de Agosto Street. They were in a house that had been made for a clinic. I saw the prisoners passing by from the Fortress and it intrigued me. As a boy, I asked myself: why is this man who is in prison, what did he do to make them take him to prison and pay attention to him? And I got involved, getting to know the clerks.”
That little boy, as we remember, offered sweets to start a conversation with the court personnel: “I learned what lawyers are like, how they defend, how they reason, what lawyer becomes famous… and I thought it could be lawyer“.
But life would take him on another path. An Argentine projection book fell into his hands. projects and thought that how architect could give better service. His first assignment:
“A plan for a carpenter who had a lot and wanted to build a house. So, like future lawyerI made my close-up.”
In Santo Domingo, where he moved in 1943 to study his degree in Architecture in the UASDlived his student years in boarding houses, of which he remembers the problem of shared bathrooms and good (sometimes) home-cooked meals.
He did not lack work, his drawing skills, always praised by his professional colleagues, took him to the studios of the most prominent architects of the time: Henry Gazón-Bona, José Antonio Caro ÁlvarezGuido de Alessandro, Bernal Bonnet, Mario Panzo.
And, working for the Engineer Pablo Bonillahe proposed solutions for the Palace of Fine Arts.
“It is a crime to come to life to work to build a house, to pay for it in 20 years with interest”Architect
The ramps
Ramps and ventilation natural They are constant and defining elements in the conception of Architect Batista’s structures. He doesn’t like stairs, it is very clear in the conversation.
It extends into the explanations about the goodness of the rampsan element that distinguishes many of its buildings. And he does not spare criticism of others: “The Copello building is very bad… It copies Le Corbusier’s bands, they put the staircase on a curve, but they don’t know how to solve the area of
From Copello to another emblematic work of El Conde, the Roxy buildingthis time design own: “It was a very specific assignment, the owner knew what he wanted: it had to have a commercial area, an office floor and housing on the upper part. That’s what I did, but the owner criticized me for being too stripped down. He was right, and I asked Domingo Liz, my friend Dominguito, to do something. And with black granite from his father’s business, who was a granite worker, he made a mural. He didn’t charge me anything.
“Santiago is growing badly”Architect
Legacy
Don Cuqui believes that he will not leave disciples. He didn’t like to give classeshe explains. He was only called once to teach some courses in La Vega, although he clarifies that it did not last long: “In La Vega they don’t like people from Santiago very much, they are strange…”, he laughs.
They will arrive in the following years jobs in schoolswith Bebecito Martínez. Dodge the jobs that may come from the Trujillo regime, although through Bonilla he contacts María Martínez and gets to know her well.
It is the time in which a house costs 64 pesos a month, which continues to amaze him, more than half a century later. “It’s a crime come to life to work to make a hometo pay it in 20 years with interest“.
He continues working, with sketches and designs, now focused on finding the best solutions for buildings in seismic zones. He details the plan he proposes: square, “in the shape of a cube with two transverse axes of symmetry that define the blocks.” Claims white for the tropics, denies color in buildings.
The experience of a lifetime leads him to defend the heterogeneity of the land use: “Specialized cities, that’s what will work. What if I dare to design a city? Of course. Niemeyer already did it in Brasilia, some things looked good… but he couldn’t solve the housing part.”
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“María Martínez was also an architect,” Batista says sarcastically. “She asked me for plans and she signed them to show her friends that she was also designing. And she told me that in Santiago they didn’t know how to eat. Well, we are alive, I answered… And then she started saying that it wasn’t sancocho, that it was sausage…”
The Palace of Fine Arts was designed to suit her and Balaguer. “I designed a building for the School of Fine Arts that could have been compared, even improved, to that of the United Nations, which today is a symbol. But they wanted ornaments, something classic. And there I used the columns. It is not the best thing I have done. It brought me more problems than joy!”
