Living at the diamond’s Signature

To Rodrigo, builder, Nathaly draftsman, “Tonchupa” sybaritic community of the end of the world, to Patricia, navigator of the prow of my balcony.

It is necessary to look at it upwards, implanted at the top of the slope; it can be mistaken for a ship, recently arrived from a strange planet, nestled in the middle of the forest, lung of Quito. Its whiteness and flashes of clear headdress, with vegetal motifs, perhaps it levitates, perhaps it perches, impossible not to be enchanted with that first impression. It has the air of the pencil of a hallucinated nymphet.

Placed on the park’s western edge, it faces the city, the young and the old volcano; it is an armchair on the stage of tempers, passions, horrors, and celebrations of the marriage of town and volcano.

In the mornings, the ancient mass is illuminated from top to bottom by the first rays of the sun; the dew impregnates the plants of the orb; the festive afternoons are painted in a varied palette: pinks, blues, purples, violets, blacks, rosewoods. Intense fires in height, shadows in the skirts, abysses in its ravines, while the king descends to his cradle. The soul shrinks before the spectacle of lights of the sky; a fine spirit is poured into, calming the turmoil of the spirit, and the cardiac gallop with such a vision of the end of the world.

The temperamental Pichincha, pissed off by the antics of Quito, darkens, shouts with thunder, unleashes sparks, invokes Neptune, rains flashes, the storm champions, the chaos of grays, blue-black greenish, fractals; calm comes, comforts us, and abates. There is peace and silence, the blessed silence of these places.

The Diamond Signature (DS) is more than a building; it is a laboratory of dreams with SPA, a garden, bodies of water, and a creek that shows the hustle and bustle as a sample of the flora and fauna of the environment. A place intoxicated with oxygen that lulls its inhabitants, once numbed by the smoke outside. It is a party ship with all the joys of caring for the body and soul; life is revalued, takes epic flashes, and is projected eternal in ludic strata.

The fog evokes in its front balconies a blind ship sailing in calm and cold seas, watered with perfumes of eucalyptus and Andean plants, the ramshackle compass. With the cannabis and perhaps guano of the garden, the vapors reach the edge of the bed, and one can swim in them from there to infinity.

Where has one seen a 557-acre backyard building? Well, here, in the magic of the diamond. To the north, east, and south is the wonder of Metropolitan Park. At an altitude of 2,900 meters, the maximum temperature ranges between 20° C and 29° C, and the minimum between 3° C and -0.20° C. The average annual rainfall is 1036 mm.

A park forest of eucalyptus and Andean forest with viewpoints on the summit line of the Guangüiltagua hill, from there you can see the Cayambe, Antisana, and Cotopaxi. There are 370 hectares of eucalyptus crossed by the streams of Ashintaco, el Guabo, and de Rosarios; they support 40 species of birds and 60 native plants.

The birds: Quinde Gigante, Colibrí Coruscans, Quinde Herrero, Carpintero de la Sierra, Torito Chico, Pájaro Brujo, Solitario, Cárcaro, Cotinga, Mirlo, Golondrina Azuliblanca, Golondrina Ventricafé, Black-headed Pincatcher, Masked Pincatcher, Pechicanelo, Huiracchuro, Catamenia, Semillero, Colifajeado Gavilán, Lechuza, Eleania Crestiblanca, Elaenia Pallatangae, Eleania Serrana and so on up to 40.

The plants: Alpacoral, Pumamaki, Pukakasha, Ñachak, Urcutañi, Alisos, Llinllin/ chinchin, Shanshi zagalita, Izu/Izo, Chocho silvestre, Kintitsunkana, Colca, Flor de mayo, Guaba, Maigua, Falsa dedalera, Taxo silvestre, Siksi, Pikiyuyu/Niguas, Capulí, Espino, Guanto blanco y rojo, Mutikasha up to 60.

We will be amazed that the Qhapaq Ñan or Inca Trail, the cultural heritage of the Andean Region of Ecuador, an ancient pre-Columbian route that unified the Inca Empire from North to south, passes through here. On silent and wolfish nights, you can still hear the rumor of the troops wandering in the vicinity with the chimes of queens and zampoñas (panpipes).

Regardless of the ancient professions of the creatures that inhabit the belly of the signed diamond, it is inevitable that they will evolve into athletes, birdwatchers, naturalists, astronomers, fog contemplators, forest divers, lake arsonists, magical beings of this astonishment, who smile just with the rumor of the wind, the bohemian and poetic spirit that feeds the air of the forest with the vapors of the gatherings of the trees flourishes.

Thanks to the builder, thanks, Rodrigo, for conceiving this marvel, we celebrate the achievement, and we praise you. Inauguration of the DS and your birthday. I confess that we thought of the Ferrari, Lamborghini, or Maserati as a present; too bad the importers would not have any for the date. In exchange, we want to give you something better: a symbol. We give you a rooster, a cockerel, like the old custom of the “house mat” of the ancestors. It is a rooster attached to a cross of four cardinal points, which according to the poets, are three: North and South.

The rooster means faith and light. Those who know say that the morning crowing of the rooster represents the triumph over darkness and evil; it denotes frankness, nobility, and loyalty. May that rooster with North be a beautiful omen for this DS community. This ship was built amid global disaster amidst bankruptcy, fear, and death. Its making rekindles faith in human genius, strength, and determination, inspired by the great geometrician of the universe.