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Category: Architecture

Interview: Franklin Contreras

Interview: Franklin Contreras

| February 7, 2012 | 1 Comment

From building houses out of cardboard boxes in his parents’ electrical store when he was a child, to designing candy stores at the university, Franklin Contreras was always destined to be an architect. The talented Guatemalan now owns his own firm, which employs over 200 people, and their designs stand out as pieces of art, [...]

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Migratory House

Migratory House

| November 14, 2011 | 0 Comments

For most people, home is where the heart is, but for Gerri and George Chester, home is where Guatemala is—whether they’re in Florida or in La Antigua Guatemala. Tired of moving around every few years for work, the retired Foreign Service officers decided to set up house in Florida just over 10 years ago and [...]

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Echoes of Fine Colonial Homes

Echoes of Fine Colonial Homes

| June 3, 2010 | 0 Comments

More than beautiful stone mansions, these were homes of real people with real lives, joys, and sorrows. In Michener’s Poland (1983), a professor who clung to life in a concentration camp pleaded, “Rebuild! Rebuild!” as “the most important thing to do when this nightmare ends…an act of faith, an act of commitment to the future…a [...]

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Turning Points

Turning Points

| March 1, 2010 | 1 Comment

Many factors influenced Guatemala’s first building boom Poet Robert Burns was voted Greatest Scot of All Time in 2009. Burns was born in 1759 in a thatch-roof cottage built by his father and lived there for seven years, a hard life of farming and poverty. He went on to live a fast life of carousing [...]

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A Guide for Architectural Tourists

A Guide for Architectural Tourists

| November 1, 2009 | 2 Comments

My partner and I are architectural tourists. We are captivated by old houses and love to view them through a lens of culture and history. We came here to learn how history and domestic life merged to create the houses of this old Spanish colonial city.

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