Bad Bunny’s “casita”, a celebrity summer center, carries a legacy

The porch of a pink and yellow house, built right in the middle of an arena in San Juan, Puerto Rico, has been the hottest meeting point in summer.

In this balcony, which is part of the stage of Bad Bunny’s 30 -day residence for the exhausted celebration of his latest album, “Debí take bad photos”, the musician has extended his hospitality receiving stars such as NBA icon LeBron James and Oscar -winning actress Penelope Cruz. Every night, celebrities and many other people dance there, in a kind of party inside the show, or “Marquesina”, as they are known in Puerto Rico.

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The house, called La Casita, not only offers the best view of the show, but also represents a cultural symbol present throughout the urban and rural landscape of the archipelago-a very recognized style of construction that arose from the combination of traditional 19th century wooden houses with the needs of a modern and postindustrial society.

For Héctor Berdecía-Hernández-Conservative of Heritage and Assistant Professor at the University of Puerto Rico, in Río Piedras-the house deserves to be preserved in a museum after the end of the residence, which takes place on Sunday.

“What is happening is historical,” he said. “This is part of a representation, and it is a work of art because it was done by an artist. It is a space that many people would consider part of Puerto Rico’s cultural legacy.”

Berdecía-Hernandez, who is also the executive director of Cencor, a Cultural Heritage Conservation and Research Center in Puerto Rico, explained that the architecture and culture of the archipelago are intrinsically linked, and the balcony, or Balcón in Spanish, is an important part of this.

He said the balcony acts as the social heart of the house, where the parranges come at Christmas (a tradition consisting of a small group surprising family and friends) and where the ritual of greeting the neighbors happens, even playing an important role in the Bad Bunny show.

“Within the show, where you see the most activity is on the porch,” said Berdecía-Hernandez. “This is part of our culture.”

It is unclear what the process is to get a place in La Casita, besides being a celebrity, but for Angel Otero, it was a matter of luck. Puerto Rican painter and sculptor, Otero received an unexpected visit from a member of the residence’s production team, who was following a friend who was visiting him at his studio in Carolina, Puerto Rico.

After a conversation, Otero was invited to take a place at La Casita during the show on August 10, alongside Spanish actor Javier Bardem; his wife, Penelope Cruz; and the renowned Port-Rican star of reggaeton, resident, on the balcony.

“In addition to the fact that some people may think this is comparable to a vip area in a nightclub, I feel it goes far beyond that,” said Otero. “Makes a very strong cultural statement because it’s like an international, multicultural and multi -part bridge with all these people. It looks like a Christmas party in a house.”

He added: “It was something very unifying, with many people intertwined very informally, going out to the porch, singing and dancing the songs.”

Mayna Magruder Ortiz, La Casita’s designer, initially worked on the house project for a short film released shortly before Bad Bunny’s album came out in January and then applied her vision to the show space. She told the Porto-Rican newspaper El Nuevo Día that she recreated the house in the arena with elements that combined her new function as one of the world’s most commented meeting spaces. For example, the kitchen maintained its original design, but was transformed into a bar.

“There are works by Puerto Rican artists such as Lorenzo Homar and Alexis Díaz, ceramics of local artists and elements telling the history of the house,” he said.

And this story goes beyond decoration.

Magruder Ortiz explained that the Royal House that appears in the Bad Bunny short is in Humano, on the east coast of the main island, and was built using the original plans of a home in Levittown, Toa Baja, where planned houses were developed for World War II veterans. “This in itself gives the house a special kind of magic,” he told El Nuevo Día.

Until the twentieth century, Puerto Rico built almost exclusively in wood, explained Berdecía-Hernandez. Before the United States replace Spanish rule and until the 1920s, the standard type of home was the “Casa Criolla”, a model known by the porch -style porch, central room and high foundations. Today, these houses remain an icon of the Porto-Rican landscape, a nostalgic image often painted next to Flamboyant and Rivers trees, and appear in works sold in craft fairs and galleries.

But Berdecía-Hernandez said that the architectural model of Puerto Rico began to change when the wood was replaced by concrete, which is resistant to hurricanes and termites, and was supported by the newly arrived American cement industry. The emerging construction was also a matter of status. The slums, with thousands of wooden structures, were the target of urban renewal projects and portrayed as unhealthy and insecure, while the concrete was sold as a symbol of progress and modernity.

After devastating storms, such as San Ciriaco in 1899 and San Ciprián in 1932, and under government campaigns such as Operation Bootstrap, an economic plan that turned the archipelago of an agricultural society into an outstanding industrial hub in the 1940s, concrete began to shape what today is recognized as the vernacular style of the house, just as the Bad stage was placed on stage Bunny.

After World War II, Berdecía-Hernandez said, the returned veterans and the expanding economy boosted the large-scale construction of the compact concrete casita, which mimicked the spatial distribution of traditional wooden houses, but with some changes and optimized for mass production. Pre-project plans have turned construction into a process almost such as setting up a puzzle. Government -sponsored programs and informal builders, many trained by federal war projects, also spread Casita in the countryside.

In the 1950s, balconies, flat roofs, thin concrete columns, Miami aluminum windows and terrace floors became the new pattern of Porto-Rican domestic design.

And now, this common design has been elevated to a global stage.

“This cultural celebration has achieved something so impactful,” said Otero. “It invites you to be proud of who you are.”

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