Area: Community Workshops
Title: "Cantera"
Site: Cantera

Mercedes M. Guerric earned a B.A. in architecture at the Catholic University in Washington D.C. (1968). Subsequently, she worked for the firm of architects Walter Kiddie Inc., in New York City, and also for the city's Department of Social Services. Ms. Guerric married the French citizen Christian Guerric and moved to France, where she gave birth to four children: Sacha, Maïa, Thomas, and Sara. Her interest in the field of preservation moved her to acquire the Hôtel Bontemps, an old house located at the historical district of Saint Germain-en-Laye, the birthplace of King Louis XIV, in the Paris metropolitan area. The house, so called because Alexandre Bontemps, the King's "Premier Valet de Chambre", undertook its first renovation in 1656, was extensively restored under the personal direction and supervision of Mercedes. This experience encouraged her to earn a master's degree in architecture, with a major in historic preservation, at the University of Texas in San Antonio. Since the year 2000, Guerric has been a teacher of architecture at the New School of Architecture of the Polytechnic University in Puerto Rico, a job that requires constant traveling between her two homes: Río Piedras and Saint Germain-en-Laye. Alongside architecture, her other interests include art -evidently- and history.