The Heritage Conservation Society

More transport terrorism

By Paulo Alcazaren
The Philippine STAR 09/02/2006

I'm still getting a lot of e-mail about that Palawan misadventure and taxi terrorism. It hit a nerve among a lot of people. First, here's an update on the Palawan issue. BEH e-mailed to say that a few days after the article came out, Palawan authorities contacted her and informed her that all tour operators were warned to police their ranks and ensure public safety. The DPWH was tasked to look at rationalizing transport access and other stakeholders informed that the province has to address these issues immediately. BEH was also informed that the tour operators in question had their license suspended for three months. Other owners and operators of hotels and tour companies assured me that their outfits do ensure tourist safety and that visitors should check on the reputation of the outfits they choose.

Well, that is all and good but, of course, the incident should not have happened in the first place. We have far too many tour, travel, and transport mishaps every year to blame it all on bad luck or fate. We have got to really achieve levels of safety acceptable in all other sane countries. This is true of all provinces and cities.

On the terrorism of taxis – many wrote in to expand the axis of transport terror to include tricycles and jeepneys. Here is a sampling of the many e-mails I received.

"I just finished reading your column about the horrific experiences of both foreigners and locals in taxi rides. Let me share with you another monster in the Philippines which causes both traffic jams and undiagnosed hypertension (undoubtedly due to anger) to private car drivers like me. It is the jeepney. The mongrel vehicle is considered a colorful part of the Philippines' history and a reminder of its American ties. Because of this, the country promotes the jeepney ride as a great experience that cannot be found elsewhere in the world. The lavish descriptions of jeepneys on Philippine tourism websites make foreigners want to ride in them, completely unaware that the difference between the photographed jeepney and the actual jeepney in Philippine reality is like black and white, earth and sky – you get my point.

"First, let me point out that most pictures of the said pest of the Philippine roads in tourism-promoting media are 'fake' – colorful and creative images featuring smiling, polite drivers. How can I say fake? Well, heck, has any one of us seen an artfully-decorated jeepney on Manila's roads in the past decade? Flags, colorful lights, and even paintings were once used to beautify the simple jeep, yet today, most of what you'll see is scratched aluminum, broken lights, black smoke emanating from mufflers, and drivers shouting at passengers to hurry up to get on or off their vehicles. Where is the creativity in that? I won't fly 10,000 miles to see an ugly moving wreck, much less trust the sweaty, shouting driver with my life.

"The jeepney drivers' undisciplined ways are not ignored by foreigners. This can be evidenced by the phrase 'only in the Philippines,' joined by a pitiful description of the uniqueness, or shall I say "weirdness," of the Philippines. One description I encountered from a foreigner friend was: 'Only in the Philippines will you find innumerable road signs which end up as graffiti canvases because motorists ignore them.' It may be funny, but then, as you have said, promotion of tourism is best shared through word of mouth. What, then, are the impressions of other foreigners who have set foot on Philippine soil?

"They were once icons of the Filipinos' creativeness and ingenuity, but today they are more like symbols of Philippine corruption, undisciplined ways, and plain stupidity. They stop anywhere, and even have the nerve to suddenly cut in front of you with no warning whatsoever, and if they find themselves in a situation wherein they get your car wracked up, I assure you that their answer would be 'Sorry, Ma'am, pero wala akong pambayad (Sorry, ma'am, I don't have money to pay for the damage).'

"My conclusion for all this is that we should first fix our country before we promote our beautiful islands to the world. Not only would foreigners be disappointed when they set foot on our land, it is also beyond a doubt that they will experience horror stories that should have been a great family vacation in the tropics."–PC

Yes, PC, jeepneys may have started as a stopgap solution to post-war transport needs, but it has been over half a century since and we have not progressed to a saner, safer mode of transport. Another e-mail adds tricycles to the ring of terror:

"The problem mentioned about taxi drivers is not just isolated to taxi drivers. I have been living in the US for over 27 years and whenever I come back to Manila and ride taxicabs, the drivers always pretend like they don't know the place at all and they will play a game with passengers and take you for a ride all over the place. Another terror is tricycles. Their drivers play a similar game and when you take a ride and ask them how much it will cost you to go from point A to point B, they will tell you 'I don't know.' For goodness sake, these guys ply the same route day in and day out, and they don't know? The word for these people is 'mapagsamantala.' They take advantage of unsuspecting passengers.

"Filipino workers in the US are the most sought-after group of workers because we are hardworking and honest. At home is a different story. We are dishonest even to our fellow kababayan. If they can do it to their fellow men, then it is easy to do it to a foreigner, especially when they don't know the language. In Tokyo, taxis have upholstery in white and the cab drivers have uniforms. In the Philippines, taxi drivers even wear tsinelas (flip-flops) and the cabs are falling apart yet they are still allowed on the road. The ACs are not working and trunks are held shut by pieces of twine." – MTT

What can I say, MTT? I wish I could slap these drivers silly with my tsinelas (or actually take a number of them to jail as my niece was mugged by one of these trike bandits, who even ran over her after snatching her cell phone!).

Another horror story from a late-night taxi user:

"I just read your article yesterday about taxi drivers and how horrible the situation is. I had an experience once with my wife after a college reunion. After the party, we decided to queue for a taxi. It turned out to be a nightmare. Our driver was an old manong and we went into the usual discussion on the best route to our house. I got a little sleepy because of the night's revelry, but my wife was still alert and noticed that the meter was running fast. She woke me up and warned me. We were talking when we noticed the taxi was swerving like a boat. My wife freaked out: The driver was sleeping at the wheel! My wife noticed that he reeked of alcohol, too, so we demanded he pull over but he refused, saying: 'Relax lang, I'm okay, hindi pako nababanga at nahuhuli at lalong lalo na hindi ako lasing (I won't crash the taxi or get caught and I'm not drunk)!' Thank God we arrived safely although the crazy driver charged us twice the fare. Something has to be done about drunken extortionist drivers who prey on the public." – GA

Yes, GA, something has to be done – but no one will claim responsibility. It is not only drunken taxi drivers that are a menace at night but drugged-out cargo-truck drivers. I try not to go out at night anymore.

Finally, an e-mail with disturbing news of a travel advisory circling the globe about the Philippines:

"We always enjoy your writing. After reading about the taxi situation, what can one say? There is no enforcement of the taxi trade. In the United States and elsewhere, they have taxi enforcement units, but that's not why we are writing. The problem is much greater than the filthy Filipino taxis. I just read an e-mail that is going around the world advising tourists not to travel to the Philippines. Before I continue, let me state that we are happy campers here. I am European and my wife is Filipina. We have a son – a mestizo Pinoy. We have happily been living here for 20 years, but it has been difficult. Let me quote the highlights of the e-mail:

"'Never trust the police. They appear to actually be behind the organized crime in the islands and are linked to murders, robberies and cases of extortion. Better to forget requesting assistance in event of a problem. Best to arm yourself.

"'All government employees are corrupt. Better believe that. Everyone wants 'grease' to perform even a simple task. Children see their teachers sell overpriced sweets and food in the classroom for better grades.

"'Never build a house. Why? Because that process will expose you to the corrupt permits people and all sorts of shakedown artists.

"'Never invest in anything in the Philippines. Rules change. You are the loser. Long-term education/insurance plan providers simply close down, leaving hapless parents stranded with no government intervention whatsoever.

"'The government, from the top down, stinks of corruption. They estimate six million Filipinos go hungry every night (although the truth is it is closer to 20 million). Every caring country in the world has given billions of dollars to help lift the Philippines out of poverty, but none of it reaches those in need. The funds go to corrupt politicians' bank accounts.

"'Final advice. Trust nobody in government. Keep to yourself and mind your own business. The Philippines is a banana republic of the worst kind, ruled by corrupt leaders and an inutile corrupt legislature and judiciary. But nevertheless, enjoy this country. It has lots to offer and the Filipinos are the warmest people. Sad to say, they have had nothing but bad government for four administrations.'

"Well, Paulo, I have to say that I agree with this e-mail 100 percent. I personally know of many ex pats who have just given up and left in disgust. Getting simple things like a driving license, electricity service, broadband connections or telephone service is a nightmare for expats. 'Grease' is everywhere. We, as an expat family, have survived and want to stay because we love it here – we just have learned to avoid the sharks in the water." – MGG

That's it, MGG. All this makes me want to do a Jim Paredes and give up hope for any change in this country. Not that I have done as much as Jim – and I don't blame him or the hundreds of thousands of fellow-middle class Filipinos like him who have made a choice to fend for themselves or their immediate families. And what can we really do when terror is everywhere anyway. But oops – I'm late for my next appointment. Taxi!

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Feedback is welcome. Please e-mail the writer at paulo.alcazaren@gmail.com

 

 

The office villages of Makati

By Paulo Alcazaren
The Philippine STAR 08/05/2006                   

In the 1970s, I started my professional career working in the Central Business District of Makati. The commute was five minutes from Baryo Kapitolyo in Pasig where I lived and traffic was never heavy except across the then-narrow bridge of pre-billboarded Guadalupe. Although the office I worked in was on Paseo de Roxas, what struck me as odd were the names of the two major office districts that flanked Ayala Avenue.

Legazpi Village and Salcedo Village housed dozens of pint-sized office buildings that rose up from their curved streets. They were half the height of the Ayala buildings, which were uniform at about 12 stories high (the limit in the ‘60s was about 15 stories because of fear of earthquakes – building technology has since progressed – and the proximity to the airport). I figured that maybe the areas were called villages because of their small-scaled structures and smallish network of roads.

I was wrong, of course.

The answer lay in the very success of Ayala’s Makati. But the clues were in that network of streets, the fact that both areas had central open spaces and the fact that surrounding these two were several already established residential villages – San Lorenzo, Urdaneta, and Bel-Air.

Salcedo and Legazpi Villages were actually designed and laid out as residential villages to support the central spine of Ayala Avenue, which was the only area originally meant to house multi-story office buildings. The two were to be the last in a sequence of "subdivided" housing (or "homesite," to use the term then prevalent) developments that complimented the live-work-play new suburb of Makati.

The background story is one of Ayala’s Makati and the strategy that the original planners led by Don Alfonso Zobel, Don Enrique Zobel, Colonel McMicking and Col. Jaime Velasquez took to develop the 1,650 hectares of former Jesuit-held swamp and marginal agricultural land.

They had taken the tack to develop a complete new satellite city with industry, offices and housing all connected via well-paved, well-lit, quick-draining roads. Few today remember that Makati in the ‘50s and early ‘60s was the most industrialized town in the province of Rizal (Makati was still a municipality and Metropolitan Manila as an entity was still decades away so any place not a city was under the control of the provincial government). The developers knew that people would move to Makati if work was nearby in factories, if the administrative offices of these plants were a few hundred meters away and if housing was a short hop away in your Dodge, Chevy or Chrysler.

Makati offered an alternative to war-damaged Manila and did so ahead of the government’s own plans for Quezon City (which I’ve written about several times in this column). Since the National Capital Plan was forever short of funds to consolidate land, much less put in infrastructure, anyone with a viable alternative was able to meet the demands of the post-war market. Makati offered all this plus it was only four kilometers from the old center compared to 15 from Quezon City.

Sales of housing sites, office and factory plots boomed. The Ayala Avenue strip was soon filled and by the early ‘70s the demand was so great that the last two residential clusters, Legazpi and Salcedo Villages, were turned into commercial zones and opened up for small office buildings. Of course, the drainage and power infrastructure was designed for residences so it took a while to retrofit the utilities. Traffic was also a problem eventually as no one had expected such huge volumes of cars and people. Ayala took another two decades to fix the problem with overhead pedestrian bridges to encourage walking and parking garages to increase capacities. In addition to all these factors was the development of Alabang and alternatives for housing even farther away.

Today, Makati is filling out and density is increasing. The office villages are booming in a second wave that is seeing structures as tall as their Ayala Avenue cousins. The call center phenomenon and new lifestyles are also turning the two into real villages where people actually live-work-play. Ayala Land has started to build high-rise condominiums in, or close to, these villages like the Columns and Columns 2 to bring back the original intent full circle – village life has never been more urban and, from the looks of plans, more urbane.

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Feedback is welcome. Please e-mail the writer at paulo.alcazaren@gmail.com

Galaxy of treasures, avenues of loss

By Paulo Alcazaren
The Philippine STAR 07/22/2006                  

Manila suffered another heritage loss last month. The Avenue Theater was a grand Art Deco structure that provided entertainment for generations of Manilans. Designed in the 1930s by National Artist for Architecture Juan Nakpil, the structure was a landmark building that helped define Manila's downtown – Avenida Rizal. The success of the current pedestrianization and revitalization of that street has led ironically to a tragedy of greed over heritage. This may eventually negate the very logic of urban revivification – that of recovering Manila's sense and pride of place.

Avenida was the main street of pre and postwar Manila. Movie houses, restaurants, department stores, bookshops and small hotels lined the street from its start near the banks of the Pasig northward, past the drugstores and the San Lazaro Hospital. It was the place to go to for movies, shopping and a night out with family and friends. Busy with traffic by day and vibrant with neon lights till the wee hours of the morning, the avenue was the entertainment capital of Manila and the Philippines.

Named after the street it was on, the Avenue Theater was one of the premier movie houses of Manila. Nakpil had designed it as a cutting-edge cinema before the war and he renovated it after the war to cater to new technologies of air-conditioning, Technicolor and wide screens. I remember watching movies with my mom there in the 1960s and I still remember passing its distinctive neon sign in the 1970s. The flight to the suburbs, however, spelled the downfall of downtown and the cinemas there eventually succumbed to DVDs and the cineplexes of malls.

The renaissance of the Avenida came in the wake of a citywide revitalization led by Mayor Lito Atienza. I had featured bits of these well-received initiatives like the Baywalk, and some parks and riverbank promenades. I also featured the Avenida redo but things must have become so successful that more and more people and more and more business came back.

This meant that the owners of these buildings, who were wont to just maintain them for low rentals before, now scrounged around for the best way to take advantage of the situation. This also meant that a disused cinema made more money if it were just turned into a parking lot or parking building. This is the fate that befell the Avenue Theatre and it is just the start.

Many of the pre and postwar buildings by well-known architects like Nakpil, Antonio, Araneta, and a host of others are now threatened with demolition. The next one to face destruction is reportedly the Galaxy Theater by another National Artist for Architecture: Pablo Antonio Sr.

We hope city authorities realize that Manila will be further devalued if it keeps losing its gems of irreplaceable architectural heritage. But it is not only Manila that is affected by the wrecking-ball attitude to development and "progress." Makati is also threatened by the possible loss or marring of one of its postwar landmarks – the Manila Polo Club.

The Manila Polo Club moved to Makati when it gave up its bayside location to join the exodus to a new suburb touted as the fresh alternative to war-torn central Manila. The Ayalas first developed Forbes Park in their huge estate to attract the business and social elite to more residences and eventually their business offices to the newly planned satellite city. One of the key attractions was the Polo Club.

The ploy worked and to ensure that the new Manila Polo Club was the best that money could build, the board enlisted the talents of Pablo Antonio Sr. as architect. Antonio designed a horizontal complex with large assembly hall-cum-lobby and commodious spaces for dining, lounging and viewing the polo games. The design evoked an elegant lifestyle that set the trend for the homes that eventually rose around it. Antonio used the best Philippine wood and stone and also set the buildings tastefully in a landscape setting designed by planner and landscape architect Louis P. Croft, who was an adviser to President Manuel Quezon before the war. The long sinuous and dramatic drive from McKinley to the steps of the clubhouse is part of his contribution.

The Polo Club has since become an institution as well as a social and architectural landmark. The club, however, has in the last few decades grown in size and required expansion. The new masterplan released recently has several members and heritage advocates up in arms.

The plans show additional structures that reportedly compromise the original scale and elegance of the Antonio design. The lobby is being enlarged to several times its original size, prodding a critic to call the design a "prime example of architectural gigantism – big for the sake of bigness." The budget has also reportedly ballooned to four times the original allocation of funds and that these large spaces will inflate the already high cost of air-conditioning and power.

All is not lost. With construction not yet started there is still time to reconsider the design. The architect may have been given conflicting goals in the design brief. The interpretation may not have been as appreciative of the original architectural flavor and heritage value as it should. The Polo Club could be saved from the fate has befallen hundreds of other architectural landmarks in our beloved metropolis.

The road to urban dystopia is lined with the rubble of lost architectural heritage. Let's all cross our fingers and hope we can conserve rather that destroy, appreciate rather than just appraise, take pride rather than just profit from all that we do.

* * * PECO Feedback

I also received lots of feedback from last week's PECO piece. From RBG: "Thanks for sharing your PECO souvenir. I also had that souvenir when I was still in high school at Quiapo Parochial School. My grandparents lived just beside PECO and it was in this establishment where I learned to appreciate books and foreign magazines. Erehwon won all my weekly allowance when I was in college at St. Paul College. It's nice to revive those years.

From my good friend Professor Butch Zialcita: "Excuse me, Paulo. Arlegui and Castillejos are not off the Escolta, which is located in Sta. Cruz. They are in Quiapo! I used to walk to PECO from our ancestral house in Quiapo. Escolta is separated from Castillejos by Sta. Cruz church, Avenida Rizal, Carriedo, Plaza Miranda, Quiapo Church and Arlegui!"

Thanks Butch …I had a senior moment of disorientation while writing the piece last week.

Finally form LLH: "This, and your other articles, bring good memories of what used to be. Keep it up and thanks for sharing! If you have articles on the web or a site where you regularly post them, kindly send me a link."

Well LLH, the Philippine STAR has a great website, www.philstar.com. I hope to come out with more sites and structures of our gentler past in the near future.

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Feedback is welcome. Please e-mail the writer at paulo.alcazaren@gmail.com

Philippine education blues

By Paulo Alcazaren
The Philippine STAR 07/15/2006

                   

The rainy season always brings back memories of elementary school, flooding and the not-too-consistent policies of the Department of Education on calling off classes due to the not-too-accurate weather predictions of the time. So what has changed?

Much too much has been said anyway on the subject of our deteriorating educational system, the sorry lack of classrooms (unless of course you fit 250 students in five shifts into one classroom), the exodus of teachers for domestic worker jobs abroad, etc. etc.

When you mention the term Philippine education, I used to think of another institution altogether, albeit one that has disappeared – the Philippine Education Company. PECO, as the firm was more popularly known, was the place to go for school supplies, books, magazines and even toys up to the early 1960s. National Book Store was just a fledgling operation then, and specialty bookstores, like Fully Booked and Ink & Stone, were still a few decades in the future.

PECO was also one of the last establishments to operate out of the old Escolta district – actually on Farnecio St. off Arlegui. I remember my father taking us there as kids. We hopped into his trusty old 180D Mercedes Benz with the sun roof (we were not rich but we rode in style) and motored all the way from Project 4 to downtown Manila to get to the store.

The place looked rather like a warehouse by today’s retail design standards. In fact, the old ’60s buildings actually were three warehouses on a hectare of land. The original PECO shop at 101 Escolta Ave. was long gone by the time I visited. The high ceilings and musty smell of old stocks of stationery, books and merchandize paint a vivid background memory of those jaunts. My dad bought us model airplanes and school supplies there, and I remember being fascinated by the miles and miles of merchandise on the industrial-looking racks. No promo banners, sales displays or fancy POS collaterals here, just plain old products under glass or on the shelves. But there were fewer shoppers in the ’60s compared to the heyday of PECO.

Time was when PECO was the only place to go for foreign books and magazines. In the pre- and post-war period, they had the monopoly on these goods, school supplies, teaching aids, architectural paraphernalia and toys. At its peak, PECO sold 640,000 copies of 1,000 foreign magazine titles a month!

PECO was founded by Verne Miller, a Thomasite schoolteacher, who landed in the Philippines in 1901. A graduate of Rutgers College, Miller spent six years in the Philippine education system as a classroom teacher before going up in the ranks as high school principal and eventually division superintendent. He resigned his post in 1907 to edit The Philippine Teacher, which was then located at 90 Escolta St. right above a barbershop. Soon he made a success of the magazine and bought majority of business. He changed the publication’s name to The Philippine Education Magazine and started a book distribution company peddling dictionaries.

The business boomed. The company was reincorporated as the Philippine Education Company and expanded into a large property at 101 Escolta St. as a retail store with a Spanish-type warehouse on Castillejos St. nearby.

Miller started selling imported books, magazines, teaching aids and then widened his offerings to Frank & Co rubber stamps, stationery, general supplies and – did I mention – toys. PECO was already an established name in the 1920s when Miller expanded yet even more into more publishing with Manila Publishing Company which offered book sets on installment, the Rosenstock (Manila) City Directory, which compiled business data, and the McCollough Printing Company, PECO’s most profitable business in the late ’30s and after the war.

By the ’30s, Miller was so busy he had to hand over his original magazine to David G Gunnell, also a former teacher. A graduate of the University of Colorado, Gunnell edited the Philippine Education Magazine and made it the recommended magazine for teachers until 1940. He joined PECO main operations that year and became its vice president and treasurer. PECO was a household name by the 1930s and, by the onset of the Second World War, its fleet of trucks with the triangular PECO logo was ubiquitous throughout the islands.

The war broke out in 1941, and the Japanese Army took the trucks and fuel. Gunnell was incarcerated at the UST with most of the other American civilians. I can’t seem to find out what happened to Miller, but Gunnell survived the war. PECO’s buildings were also miraculously saved from destruction during the Liberation, and Gunnell , along with a cadre of pre-war PECO men, put the company back on its feet.

The business environment improved and profits returned for PECO until the mid-’50s when dollar shortages and import controls reduced the company’s ability to deliver goods to the market. Their magazine sales dropped to only 40,000 a month with only 58 titles available or permitted. The contents of the magazines were also an issue to post-war conservative Manilans. The celebrated case was that of an issue of the American magazine Pageant. Word circulated that a controversial article, "The Sexual Behavior of the American Female," was coming out in the magazine, which was a best seller at PECO. The Holy Name Society got the Bureau of Customs to rule the magazine as obscene and therefore subject to burning. The magazines were impounded at the ports and rotted as the case dragged in the courts.

Gunnel ran the company until the 1960s when he was in his 80s. This was the period that I had first patronized the store with my father. In the late ’60s, the old Manila complex was gone and PECO moved to the Makati Commercial Center. (It was at the one-storey Post Office building that they relocated to. I frequented the store there. My dad got me my first magazine subscription through that store – to Popular Mechanics). It was smaller but the magazine offerings improved in the late Sixties and Seventies. A nearby bookstore, Erehwon, was another favorite.

Eventually, other bookstores bloomed. National, Goodwill and other shops and department stores relegated PECO’s one-shop operation to the margins of the retail world. It disappeared completely in the late ’70s. I do not know whether it’s still around, but Philippine education will never be the same again without PECO.

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Feedback is welcome. E-mail the writer at paulo.alcazaren@gmail.com

Clean and green

By Paulo Alcazaren
The Philippine STAR 01/21/2006

In the late 1880s, Manila was considered the dirtiest city in the Far East. Seeing the larger agglomeration of Metro Manila today, one may make the same observation – except for a few spots maintained by private developers or earmarked as "investor corridors" or "showcase pilot projects" created in a seasonal show of cleanliness that cannot be sustained. The change of regime under the Americans, however, brought a change so complete that Manila cleaned itself up and became the Pearl of the Orient.

To gain insight into this radical makeover, let me excerpt from a 1905 article entitled "The Re-making of Manila" by Bradford Daniels. The subhead was "Changing a pest-hole into a healthful and beautiful Capital of Commerce of the East." Daniels wrote:

"When the Americans marched into Manila on August 23, 1898, it was the filthiest place in the Orient; today it is one of the cleanest cities east of the Suez (canal), and tourists who visit it pronounce it the most attractive spot in the East. In six years it has been transformed into a center of activity and enterprise."

Daniels pointed out that because of its attractiveness, the city drew the adventurous and enterprising from America: "Restless young (university) fellows (and lawyers) who felt that even in the United States the world was moving too slow for them, physicians who saw new worlds to conquer, engineers who sought to amass great fortune quickly, merchants who dreamed that they saw profitable trade – these and many others came to Manila… Thus came representative men …and the accumulated knowledge and experience …was concentrated in a single city as it has never been before."

This capacity that led to the betterment of the city was exemplified in key civil servants like army surgeon Major E. C. Carter who took on the task of addressing the sanitary problem of the city: "With a sympathy that enables him to put himself in the other man’s place, he undertook the education of the Filipino to better modes of living in a way that has accomplished more in three years than (other men may have) in a generation. The 226,000 inhabitants have been so thoroughly vaccinated that smallpox has come to be insignificant; cholera (was cut down to one thirtieth the deaths from previous outbreaks); and with new water and sewage systems another outbreak of the scourge within the city limits will be practically impossible. Bubonic plague has been reduced to a minimum by inoculations, by isolation in the San Lazaro Hospital, which is the finest and best equipped building for infectious diseases in the East, and by the relentless campaign against rats. Through these methods the death rate in Manila has fallen far lower than some (large cities in the mainland like Baltimore and New Orleans). …Plans for a civil hospital to cost more than P1,000,000 (have been made)…"

This hospital was eventually built and is known today as the Philippine General Hospital. Daniels continues with descriptions of other infrastructure built to benefit the city: "In the harbor itself 600 acres are protected against the terrible typhoons by two massive stone breakwaters extending nearly three miles. In the construction of these great walls more than two million tons of stone have been used."

These harbor improvements led to the creation of the modern port of Manila which, until the outbreak of hostilities in the Second World War, was the best in the East and rivaling Shanghai and the Japanese ports.

Daniels describes another important improvement, this time in land transport. "But, of all the innovations, the street cars are the dearest to the hearts of the Americans. The Manila Electric Light and Railroad Company is spending more that five million dollars to supply the city with transportation and light. The city will soon have a new telephone system too. The streetcar company has employed native labor from the first, and with eminently satisfactory results. It now has 50 miles of as fine a track as could be found anywhere and the line may be extended around the head of Manila Bay to Cavite.

"The Meralco and PLDT have had their ups and downs but today are institutions that still provide for people’s needs. Too bad the tranvias are gone and the current LRT/MRT system is an incomplete and uncoordinated system that is constantly playing catch-up with the growing metropolis. As far back as a century ago there were already plans to link Cavite with Manila via an efficient rail system. We are truly a hundred years behind.

Daniels also highlighted the new parks that were being built or planned for the city (according to the Daniel Burnham master plan of 1905): "Near (the southern edge of the city – today’s Harrison Park) there will be a pleasure park such as can be found nowhere else in the Orient; and on Sundays the people may enjoy an outing through one of the finest section of (countryside in the archipelago)."

Too bad Harrison Park was sold to private developers and we lost the only opportunity south of the city to build a much needed park.

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Feedback is welcome. Please e-mail the writer at paulo.alcazaren@gmail.com

The bells of Loyola

By Paulo Alcazaren
The Philippine STAR 01/07/2006

I am still receiving e-mails and phone calls about the piece I did on the UP Chapel. Apparently many alumni and fellow professors share the view that it has lost its clean and green setting. But I will get back to that later. This week, we venture nearby to another campus and another ecclesiastical edifice of note – this time, not threatened by aesthetic abuse or lack of funds for maintenance.

The Church of the Gesu on the campus of the Ateneo de Manila University is now a landmark for the Jesuit school. Its pointy peak and cross are visible from the traffic-infested, overhead bridge-challenged Katipunan Avenue. Recently, the church’s silhouette has been made more elegant with the addition of a new 19-bell carillon. High-flying Atenistas now pursue academic and gimmick goals bajo las campañas (under the bells).

The church is a modernist take on a long line of Jesuit churches that have their origins in the original Gesu in Rome. The Ateneo has had several of these churches starting with the one destroyed in Intramuros. The campus in Loyola, to which the school moved after the Second World War, was also a modern remake of a formerly urban campus with wide, open and green spaces (undefiled by telephone and power cables, which the original planners – thank God – buried underneath).

The Ateneo chose the firm of Recio+Casas to design the new Gesu. Bong Recio, the principal in charge, is an alumnus. He took pains to study the site to find the best geometry and location for the building. The striking design was unlike anything seen since another geometric wonder (the UP dome by Leandro Locsin) was constructed 50 years earlier. The angle-roofed structure is an abstraction of a bird in flight (an eagle, of course) and is perched on a slight knoll with a large "sunken" quad in front of it – perfect siting for prominence despite the structure’s relatively small size.

It’s not how large the church is that counts, it’s how appropriately configured the space is inside. Here, Recio is eminently efficient and stylish. Less is really more in this structure. It eschews frills, is airy and cool in addition to being dramatic from all angles.

The drama, however, was a little off, or so I thought when I first saw the church in late 2002. The composition seemed to lack something and (I later found out) it was the carillon that had to wait until now to be built. Additional funds were raised (by High School Class ’60 and College ’64) in the interim and happily, the carillon, also designed by Recio+Casas, was finally built last year and inaugurated in October.

The tall white bell tower is separate from the main structure and balances its geometry carefully. It houses 18 bells and an Angelus bell that now gives students and passersby notice of events, masses and hours of prayer. The 18 bells are named, following an old liturgical tradition, after the Blessed Trinity, saints and the blessed. Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the Holy Saints above! This carillon rocks!

I visited one late afternoon to find it constantly visited by students and staff. The evening brought a Mass, and outside the church its new carillon glowed, enhanced by heavenly chimes. How I wish my own campus would take as much effort at sustaining an ideal setting for academic and other pursuits.

The Diliman Dilemma

Ateneo, as with UP and Miriam, is threatened externally by encroaching urban blight, uncoordinated infrastructure, billboard mania and unfriendly streets and avenues. I hope we do not lose Ateneo’s (and Miriam’s) picturesque look and whatever is left of UP Diliman to lack of planning or deficiencies in urban design.

Finally for this week I’d just like to reprint two of the correspondence I received on the UP Chapel.

Dear Mr. Alcazaren,

I am Fiel Dalangin, a senior student of the UST College of Architecture. Two points struck me in your "Chapel of Sacrifice." The first is the building technology of the chapel and second the architecture of UP that made the image.

The thin shell construction applied in the UP Chapel was a breakthrough at the time. I think it only shows that the buildings we have now and even the most sophisticated ones are products of past buildings in our history. Buildings evolve as different ingenuities and different needs arise.

A history professor once told me that the primary way to understand the buildings of today is to understand history. It is a sad truth that history is not given much importance.

For me, UP’s golden age in architecture was during the first three decades after it was transferred to Diliman. It was the period when buildings stood as ideas of a state university, a place made. What is happening to the campus is a product of economic and political starvation. Both virtual and physical image suffer. I believe that those who don’t understand architecture as an idea of place-making are not sensitive to its importance.

It is up to us architects and planners to continue to find ways and solutions for architectural problems even if bound by other problems.

From a balikbayan, this excerpt and commentary on what has happened to the UP Chapel:

About the ravaging of the UP Chapel’s landscape by someone who ran amok – was he the same person responsible for renaming Delaney Hall "Tambayan" or something?

I haven’t seen the disaster site recently, but I hope the chapel site is not another victim of the concrete-basketball-court syndrome afflicting most of our provincial churches, with their beautiful acacia trees cut and their spacious grounds paved with cement.  I dread to see the scene of the crime at Diliman.

A continuing crime is indeed happening to the UP Chapel. I wish I could make a citizen’s arrest to put a stop to its deterioration, but who’s to be arrested? Thankfully, I hear that some UPSCAN alumni are trying to find a way to bring the chapel back. Let’s hope this happens soon.

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Feedback is welcome. Please e-mail the writer at paulo.alcazaren@gmail.com.

Chapel of sacrifice

By Paulo Alcazaren
The Philippine STAR 12/17/2005                   

My first memory of the University of the Philippines was in 1965. My father had bought me a toy rocket ship and we launched it from one of the many open green spaces set within the lush campus landscape. I thought at the time that it was cool that we were the first to bring the space age to the UP. I was wrong. I found out later that it had come much earlier – in 1955 – with the completion of the Chapel of the Holy Sacrifice, affectionately known as Diliman’s "flying saucer."

Less than 10 years after that rocket launch, I found myself enrolled at the UP and painting that domed chapel in watercolor for a class in architectural rendering. That prompted my first visit and the experience was profound. I had never been in a circular church before and it felt strange to see the altar in the center. Nevertheless, I was drawn to it. Despite its small scale (only a hundred feet across), the space had an impact and a focus few structures here could match then, and that holds true even today.

The interior space was enhanced with artwork – a two-sided crucifix above showing the tortured, then the risen Lord, an abstracted river of life in a terrazzo-patterned floor below and 15 striking murals (Stations of the Cross) between the dome’s 32 columns – and added to the whole effect of embracing the visitor spatially and spiritually. The chapel was wonderfully open, blending the interior with the green outside. Finally, the setting – a simple, green lawn rising gently from the road – completed the postcard-pretty scene.

That scene and the chapel had a great influence on thousands of Dilimanians’ lives. Next Tuesday, Dec. 20, marks the chapel’s golden anniversary. The chapel is special not just because of its physical and religious landmark status on the campus but also because of the personalities behind its inception, design, construction and embellishment.

A Priest, Four Artists & Two Engineers

Fr. John Delaney, the controversial but charismatic Jesuit chaplain assigned to the campus, orchestrated the project. National Artist for Architecture Leandro Locsin cut his teeth designing it. Dean Alfredo Juinio of the UP College of Engineering came up with the innovative thin-shell approach which a young David Consunji implemented to perfection using the simplest of machinery and lots of guts.

Finally, three cutting-edge artists – Napoleon Abueva, Arturo Luz and Vincente Manansala – created the crucifix, floor and murals respectively, which started them on the road to national artist status. (Another national artist, in music this time, Jose Maceda, would premier his concert "Pagsamba" there in 1968 and repeat it regularly in the same venue.) One renowned religious leader, four national artists and two giants in Philippine engineering and construction make for a really special structure …and a compelling story of how it got built.

The UP transferred to Diliman in 1949. It was meant to do so in 1942 as part of a massive transfer of civic structures that included a new capitol complex at the elliptical circle. The war intervened. Immediately after, the future campus was commandeered by the American Armed Forces as their headquarters. The two Juan Arellano-designed structures built in 1941 meant for the colleges of law and education became military offices. Around it rose dozens of quonset huts and a chapel of wood, galvanized iron roofing, bamboo and sawali that had a distinctive vernacular-inspired roof (my suspicion is that it was also Arellano-designed because of some references in the literature to his experimentation in pitch-roofed silhouettes for the state university’s architecture).

Unstable Architecture And A Troubled Up

That chapel deteriorated into stables towards the end of the UP’s military term. It was in shambles when Fr. Delaney found it but he quickly went to work to clean it up, aided by an ever growing flock of students, faculty and residents. After the patch-up, the UP chapel became the religious center of the campus. In the early ‘50s it was shared with the Protestant and Aglipayan congregations reflecting the open spirit of community in UP then.

The growing population of students and residents in the 493-hectare campus, however, took its toll and Fr. Delaney, as well as the Protestant church leaders, finally decided it was time to build new and separate chapels. Under UP president Vidal Tan, the campus also accommodated requests and allocated parcels in the non-academic north section of the university for both.

Those were trying years for Delaney, president Tan and the university. Issues of academic freedom, the threat of sectarianism (fueled by Fr. Delany’s extremely pro-active involvement in campus life and the growing political clout of the Delaney-mentored UP Student Catholic Action organization), and fraternity and sorority violence (which the chaplain tried his best to solve) made for a more complicated narrative, whose total complexion colored the entire decade.

It was in the middle of this maelstrom that the idea for the "saucer" started. In May 1954 the Protestant chapel was first to start construction. The modern structure, by university architect Cesar Concio, was completed a year later. The Protestant Chapel of the Risen Lord was funded by donations from America. The Catholic congregation was not so lucky and had to scrounge and scrape, egged on by the tireless Fr. Delaney to "give till it hurt." Fr. Delaney also did not want to sell out to corporate sponsorship or be beholden to endowments from the rich. Almost all of the P150,000 it took (remember, the peso was 2:1 back then) was raised by the UP congregation. Students missed their lunches and faculty donated portions of their salary to the fund. No wonder the chapel was named The Chapel of the Holy Sacrifice!

Financially Contrite But Creative

It was more than sacrifice that added to the value of the chapel, it was the creative resource and risk Fr. Delaney took in the team that he selected to build it. He probably also felt the pressure to deliver to his flock a structure as modern as the neighboring Protestant Chapel. The saddle-shaped structure cut a handsome sight and his congregation would settle for no less.

During dinner one night at the home of the Abuevas, he met a 26-year-old architect whose only experience after college was to spend a year designing a radical circular chapel for a sugar magnate in Negros. It was supposed to be a gift to the Don Bosco fathers and meant to symbolize unity and openness. The chapel was never built but Fr. Delaney had almost identical requirements. The loss of the Bosconians (a congregation to which I belong) was UP’s gain.

Fr. Delaney wanted a simple but strong building that would be open to the light, air and space that UP had plenty of back then. He also wanted to maximize the potential of the site allocated by the university, an elevated platform rising slightly above and across the university infirmary and the Protestant chapel.

With the previous client’s permission, Locsin adapted the original design to fit the site. Fr. Delaney then roped in Dean Juinio for the structural design and Jose Segovia for the electrical design. The contractor was a young maverick named David Consunji, the founder of today’s construction powerhouse DMCI. The dean worked hard at fulfilling the requirements to create a dome to float above a thousand worshippers lightly and at the least cost. His answer: a thin shell nine inches at the base and diminishing to only three inches at the top.

When It Rained, They Poured

This type of roof had never been built in the country. It took the ingenuity of Consunji to construct it within the constraints of the meager budget and the lack of equipment needed to pour the shell within the 18-hour window Juinio set. The solution was ingenious and daring – four construction towers and a continuous ramp circling the structure allowed ordinary concrete mixers (churning out high-strength concrete) to supply a squad of workers in buggies rotating to pour the concrete.

The pour date was Aug. 25, 1955. It started to drizzle in the early morning and threatened to wreck the operation (the water would dilute the mix and weaken the concrete). But Fr. Delaney held a prayer vigil with UPSCANs taking turns asking for divine intervention. They got it as the site remained totally dry even as other parts of the large campus were drenched, even the University Theater, where the Nobel Prize winner for literature, William Faulkner, delivered a lecture.

With the dome completed, Locsin and Delaney sought the artists needed to furnish and embellish the structure. They were all given complete artistic freedom (so long as they stayed within the budget). Abueva hung his heavy wooden cross from the oculus (above which Locsin put the chapel’s bells). Luz integrated the symbolism of nature in the "river of life" into the terrazzo floor that connected the interior spaces with the circular lanai, which in turn was the smooth transition to the simple lawn outside. Manansala added color literally to the chapel with his murals of the Way of the Cross (with a 15th panel showing the Risen Lord – an attempt to relate to the neighboring Protestant chapel, perhaps?).

The Chapel And Up’s Current Malaise

At four in the morning on Dec. 20, 1955 the chapel was blessed by Archbishop Rufino J. Santos. Fr. Delaney said the first mass (also the first Christmas mass) to an overflowing crowd. In his sermon, he thanked all those who made sacrifices to see that the chapel would be completed. The mood of the congregation was joyous and it spilled over to January only to be dashed by the news of Delaney’s death from a stroke. The sacrifices and trials he faced in the last few years had taken its toll. His body was brought from the Ateneo to the new chapel for the requiem mass, starting a tradition of honoring those of UP who had made a difference.

The new chapel and the loss of their mentor only spurred UPSCANs to carry on their perceived mission of shaping campus life. In the years that followed they took political control of the student council stirring up a hornet’s nest of trouble that ended in the suspension of student political life in UP until a decision by the Supreme Court in the early ‘60s.

The story of the chapel and the university by then was moving at a breakneck speed towards more tumult from the left, right and center (literally). Martial law followed with the neutering of the university’s feistiness. People Power followed and the UP’s gentle decline caused by financial woes, the indifference of government, physical deterioration of facilities and an inability to maximize its potential and pull itself out of the morass of internal strife and political issues that date back to those unresolved in the 1950s.

A Chapel Choked

I visited the chapel recently and was glad to see that the work of Locsin, Juinio, Consunji, Abueva, Luz and Manansala has stood the test of time. The ceiling is flaking a bit but most of the interiors, artwork and furnishing have stood up well despite five decades of service. The feeling inside is still magnificent and clearly the structure should be declared a national treasure.

I was appalled, however, at the condition of its gardens and the surrounding landscape. The chapel cannot now be appreciated as it was originally intended – a structure that was open and barrier-free. Gone are the visual connections to other buildings and the transparency and friendliness of the 1950s setting. The place has been eaten by the virus of horror vacuii – the fear of empty spaces that politicians with their city halls and parish priests with their churches perennially suffer from. Moreover the circulation of air is compromised because the structure is choked by so much extraneous material.

The chapel’s formerly simple and elegant grounds have been cut up into numerous odd-shaped parcels and "decorated" with themes, awkward fountains, "decorative" odds and ends (although the statuary isn’t bad) along with an over-busy landscaping that obviously cannot be constantly maintained.

I was told that a previous parish priest run amuck and turned the grounds into a succession of follies that pushed the bounds of aesthetics and gives meaning to the word "ugly." I would gladly go on a starvation vigil to have all of it removed and the chapel given back its proper and distinguished setting, however humble it may be.

The rest of the campus’ balkanized landscape suffers similar fate. Colleges cage themselves in or surround their buildings with parking lots that are pedestrian-unfriendly. The architecture of new buildings seldom relate to their surroundings while lack of funds is evident in the lack of maintenance for almost every corner of the university. Gone are the days when UP Diliman carried an image of idyllic pursuit of scholarship. Today’s students pursue the next class across unsheltered narrow sidewalks and unsafe stretches of overgrown cogon.

The space age has come and gone for UP. Vestiges of its former glory are seen in structures like the chapel but just barely. The campus seems to have been sacrificed by the gods of macroeconomics at the altar of national belt-tightening. It may also be abandoned by Delaney’s God soon if we do not make the real sacrifices needed to ensure a rational, open-minded, non-sectarian, politics-free and aesthetically-abled future for the university.

* * *

A eucharistic celebration on December 20, Tuesday, at 5:30 p.m. will bring together past and present community members and friends of Fr. John P. Delaney, SJ, and all those who helped build the UP Chapel through their prayers and sacrifices. The National Historical Institute (NHI) through its chairperson, Ambeth Ocampo, has signified its intention to declare the chapel as a national historical landmark. Tentative date for unveiling of the marker is Jan. 12, 2006, the 50th death anniversary of Fr. Delaney.

Feedback is welcome. Please e-mail the writer at paulo.alcazaren@gmail.com.

Heritage and our architectural future

By Paulo Alcazaren
The Philippine STAR 12/03/2005

Philippine architecture is the least documented of our arts. Philippine painting, sculpture, music and theater have been studied, recorded, collected, and archived. Most importantly, art criticism has thrived as part of the process of evolving Philippine art and keeping it relevant to our culture. Books on Philippine art are produced yearly, covering past masters as well as showcasing new talent. Our schools train artists and performers who benefit from this wealth of knowledge, continuing research and publication. Philippine art is alive, kicking and making waves well beyond our shores.

The same has not been true of Philippine architecture. Less than a dozen books on the subject have been printed in the last 100 years (many of them slim monographs and only two covering the entire range of Philippine architecture). A new book, just launched at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, hopes to fill this gap, so that our architecture may evolve without losing its cultural soul or its contemporary relevance.

Philippine Heritage Architecture: Before 1521 to the 1970s authored by Maria Cristina Valera-Turalba (with an introduction by Dr. Jaime C. Laya) is the light at the end of our architectural tunnel. ArchitectTuralba, an associate professor at the College of Architecture in the University of the Philippines and head of the Sentro ng Arkitekturang Filipino of the United Architects of the Philippines, has always been an advocate of heritage conservation. She has, and continues to be, instrumental in many heritage-related initiatives at the UAP, through the NCCA and even internationally via the Union Internationale des Architectes (UIA), where she is working on the nomination of Batanes as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The book is the product of over five years of research. The documentation of heritage architecture was an idea broached earlier by Dr. Jaime C. Laya to Arch. Turalba. It was finally taken up by the NCCA and UAP under its president, then Arch. Hedy Luis, and pursued by succeeding UAP heads. Arch. Turalba was the implementing executive and rallied a team of UAP members and tireless heritage advocates to comb the entire archipelago, eventually documenting 1,500 structures in 16 regions.

The project was completed in 2004, but Turalba continued with the project (with the sole sponsorship of the real-estate company Active Group Inc., headed by Arch. Tony Turalba) to turn the raw documentation into a book that would benefit students of Philippine architecture, practicing professionals and the general public – that until now had little access and little appreciation for over half a millennia of architectural heritage literally sitting in their backyards.

The project and the book could not have come at a more crucial time. As Turalba reports, "The sad fact is, of the structures documented in the database... 35 percent have already been cannibalized, or defaced beyond recognition, or demolished…"

Aside from this continuing destruction, there is a more insidious malaise that afflicts and threatens Philippine architecture. Turalba points out that we have entered what architectural critic Fr. Bobby Perez calls a "post-Filipino" period, referring to the fact that many of the modern skyscrapers and building complexes built in the Philippines in the last decade were not the product of Filipino architects but foreign designers.

In the boom years of the ’90s, Philippine architecture took a step back as clients and the public began putting more value on designs created abroad than those produced by local architects. The Asian downturn thankfully put a damper on this propensity to "brand" architecture with a foreign label. Today, with the real estate market slowly coming back, there is worrying evidence that we may lapse back into this colonial mentality that foreign is better.

The book aims to counter this disturbing scenario. It aims to provide a sourcebook of architectural heritage to provide inspiration, as Dr. Laya states in his introduction, "to (Filipino) architects, owners, and developers to more fully understand Philippine architectural heritage and rise to the challenges of adaptive re-use and creative design in a distinctively Filipino architectural style." This distinctiveness and cultural specificity can mitigate the more adverse effects of globalization and foreign architectural hegemony.

The book’s featured structures are organized chronologically in periods – vernacular (pre-Hispanic), Spanish colonial, American colonial, and 20th century. Its 196 pages are filled with images and information, much of which will redefine the richness and diversity of Philippine architecture for most readers. From the Ijangs – ancient pre-16th-century fortifications – to magnificent brick and stone cathedrals, to the Art Deco mansions of Iloilo, the structures in the book amaze, delight, and enlighten.

Turalba says that this book is just the "tip of the iceberg" and that hopefully means that more books are on the way. A new generation of culturally-sensitive architects is also coming up to help advocates like her to continue the fight to preserve our built heritage. Organizations like the Heritage Conservation Society are also working hand in hand with members of the UAP and other professional and cause-oriented groups to address the continuing loss (estimated by some to be one heritage structure a week).

We do not have to turn our sights (and pocketbooks) overseas for architecture that will be true to our culture, reflect our passion or validate our modernity. All we need to pursue is scholarship in architectural history, theory, and criticism. This should be based on a conserved treasure of heritage architecture, the likes of which this book is based on. Secondly, all we have to do is mine the sustainable resource of our own creative talent and evolve our architecture based on this body of knowledge. Finally, what we can look forward to, if we do all this, is a future where our structures can help build better communities, house our ever-growing population and ultimately shelter a robust national identity.

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Philippine Heritage Architecture: Before 1521 to the 1970s, authored by Maria Cristina Valera-Turalba (with an introduction by Jaime C. Laya) is available at major bookstores. Feedback is welcome. E-mail the writer at paulo.alcazaren@gmail.com.

Juan M de Guzman Arellano: Renaissance man

By Paulo Alcazaren
The Philippine STAR
11/26/2005

I start my classes in Philippine architectural history at the University of the Philippines College of Architecture each year by asking the students to list down 10 important Filipino architects or landscape architects. Most can name only two or three architects and few can come up with only one landscape architect of note. Leandro Locsin and Bobby Mañosa are the most common answers for architects while IP Santos is the name that crops up for landscape architecture.

Almost no one can name any pre-war architect and so the authorship of over a hundred years of modern Philippine design is anonymous to most design students. Even fewer can name the three architects awarded the National Artist Award for Architecture – Juan Nakpil, Pablo Antonio Sr., and Leandro Locsin, of course. There are far more unrecognized architects than a country that prides itself in creativity should have. Three generations of designers have come and gone and the prime example of these lost heroes is Juan Marcos de Guzman Arellano.

The Post Office, Metropolitan Theater, Legislative building, and dozens of civic buildings are part of his immense body of work. Yet he merits no award and little printed space in history books.

Juan was born in April 25, 1888 to a family in the arts, music, and architecture. His father Luis was a maestro de obras. His elder brother was also a maestro de obras and the first architect to be retained by the new American colonial government to survey the city. Juan’s cousin Alejandro joined him at the Bureau of Public Works in 1927 and later ran Juan’s architectural office (he was in charge of drawings for the Metropolitan Theater). Alejandro also succeeded Juan as dean of the FEATI School of Architecture and Fine Arts in 1955. Otillio Arellano was Juan’s nephew (the son of Arcadio).

Juan attended the Ateneo Municipal and graduated in 1908. His first interest was reportedly painting and he trained under Lorenzo Guerrero, the "Ermita Master," Toribio Antillon, and Fabian de la Rosa. He, however, decided to pursue architecture instead; probably because it would earn him a living.

Arellano was one of the first pensionados in architecture (after Carlos Barreto – Drexel 1908, Antonio Toledo – Ohio State University, and Tomas Mapua – Cornell University).

Juan attended the Philidelphia Academy of Fine Arts in 1911 and moved on to Drexel Institute for his bachelor’s degree in Architecture. He was trained in the Beaux Arts system. He worked for George Post and Sons in New York and is said to have worked for Frederick Olmsted Jr., the landscape architect and planner (and son of Frederick Law Olmsted who designed Central Park) in 1912 or 1913. That year, he also traveled to Europe and did the traditional grand tour – sketching and painting architectural monuments and landscapes.

Arellano returned home to start a private practice with his brother Arcadio Arellano between 1913 and 1916. He later on decided to join the Bureau of Public Works at an auspicious time – the end of the transition period when the last American consulting architects George Fenhagen and Ralph Harrington Doanne (after Edgar Bourne and William Parsons) were leaving. Here, Arellano started what was to be his longest string of projects and ones that have defined the American colonial and Philippine commonwealth periods.

He was made supervising architect with Tomas Mapua at the BPW until 1927 when he took a study leave for the United States. This trip to the US was key to his transition in styles to the Art Deco – previously, he had taken the Neoclassic style, which was the signature style of government then. While in the States, he exhibited his "colorful paintings" in Washington DC’s famous Arts Club in 1927 (he had not forgotten his art).

Arellano returned to Manila in 1930 and designed the Metropolitan Theater. It was controversially "moderne," but became the de facto cultural center of Manila and the Philippines. He continued to act as consulting architect for the BPW (Tomas Mapua had retired earlier to head his new school The Mapua Institute of Technology) overseeing the production of the first zoning plan for Manila and eventually teaming up with American Harry Frost to design the new capital of Quezon City in 1940.

He also designed a scheme for the High Commission of the United States (eventually the American Embassy). His design for a demesne on the bay’s edge was an elegant revival-style mansion, which took great advantage of the city’s best seaside view. The design was nixed by the Americans in favor of a bland federal-style structure that was overpriced and hot inside (the architects did not understand tropical design).

Arellano retired after the war. His devastated buildings (the legislature, post office and Jones Bridge) were reconstructed, but he lamented that the original designs were not followed and were poor replications of the grand edifices they once were.

Arellano was still active in the profession until the mid-’50s. He had helped start the first professional association in the early ’30s and designed the logo of the Philippine Institute of Architects. He retired in 1956 at age 68 and went back to his first love – painting. In 1960, he exhibited over 300 paintings at the Manila YMCA, giving the public a rare (and last and only) glimpse at his exemplary talent.

Juan Arellano was a renaissance man. He had been taught under the Beaux Artes method, which trained designers in painting, sculpture, classical art, and architectural history with heavy doses of music and culture. His (along with his generation of architects) was a holistic approach to teaching architecture and design. Arellano sought to practice that way and eventually designed the syllabi of the country’s early schools under the same model.

The war and the subsequent devolution of the profession have diminished the role and function of modern architects. Today, we produce mere draftsmen hoping to land OFW jobs instead of leaders who can help (literally) build a stronger and more elegant republic.

We need to recover the works of Arellano (like the Metropolitan Theater) and others of his generation to be able to benefit from a treasure trove of heritage in architecture.

The future of the design professions lies in making sure that architectural history and heritage exist for students to learn from and for the public to benefit by using. Otherwise, it is back to square one and our young students will only look overseas for both their heroes and ultimately their identities.

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View Juan Arellano’s architectural sketches and lyrical paintings at the Lopez Museum, ground floor, Benpres Building, Exchange Road in Ortigas Center, Pasig City until April of 2006.

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Feedback is welcome. E-mail the writer at paulo.alcazaren@gmail.com.

More Monti

By Paulo Alcazaren
The Philippine STAR 11/19/2005

The life and works of Italian sculptor Francesco Monti interested a lot of readers last week. A good number wrote to point out other Montis that have survived the last half century. This is a letter from Dr. T.M. Topacio Jr., Professor Emeritus and former dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of the Philippines: 

"Dear Mr. Alcazaren: 

"I always read your feature articles in City Sense in the Philippine STAR. Although I am a veterinarian by profession, I appreciate beautiful buildings and you always feature them in your articles.

"In the November 5 issue of the STAR where you featured ‘Monumental Monti,’ I saw his creation called ‘Homage to Agriculture,’ which shows the Philippine carabao with a beautiful lady astride the animal. I would like to think that Monti interpreted the carabao as the symbol of Philippine agriculture and the lady represented the Philippines. It is indeed a fitting homage to our country. It was mentioned that this work of Monti was erected in Bacolod. Can you please tell me where it is located there? I would like to see this original work.

"I would like to inform you that there is an exact replica of Monti’s work installed in the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) offices on Visayas Ave., Diliman, Quezon City. The replica was formerly  installed at the original building of the BAI in Nagtahan, Pandacan, Manila, before World War II. The BAI was transferred to its present site. The replica of the Monti homage was likewise transferred. On the 75th anniversary of the BAI, the Monti homage was permanently installed with appropriate ceremonies as its symbol.  Visitors were asking who designed the homage. Nobody knew the answer. I found the answer when I read your article. I will relay this to the director of the BAI so that Monti will be given due recognition even if it’s only a replica. But I hope you can inform me where the original is located.

"Thank you and I wish you continuing success in your work."

Thank you, Dr. Topacio. The Monti sculpture is located in the plaza in front of the old provincial capitol building in Bacolod City. Thank you, too, for the information on the homage. I will relay it to Prof. Boots Herrera. By the way, the Monti exhibit is in Bacolod and it will move on to Iloilo after that.

* * *

Another letter I received from Architect E. Garrido is more general but also refers to the homage paid:         

"Greetings from Honolulu:

"Your article ‘Monumental Monti’ appropriately pays homage to a man that has contributed a lot to Manila’s public arts and urban spaces.

"I just came back from a 12-day trip to Washington, D.C. (Oct. 21 to Nov. 1) as part of the program I am currently attending here at the East-West Center in Honolulu, and this trip has given me another opportunity to view the city from a visitor/non-Washingtonian perspective.

"A guided tour by one of our program officers (who is also a certified Washington, D.C. tour conductor) reinforced my previous view of the city as the best-planned city in the world built mostly during the modern era. My claim would lead to endless discussion if I would try to expound on it. But let me just give a few examples: the DuPont Circle, where my hotel is located, is one of the seven circles that appear in the original L’Enfant’s plan for Washington, D.C. Today the neighborhood maintains its historic character, the same most likely with others in D.C., with row houses, mansions, and office buildings from around the 1870s onwards still neatly maintained.

"The DuPont Circle is landmarked by a fountain created by the architect Henry Bacon and the sculptor Daniel Chester French, who also made the beautiful sculpture now prominently located at The Mall near Capitol Hill. These indicate, among many others, that in the planning and development of the city, they paid a lot of attention and consideration to the concepts of its creators, planners, designers, sculptors, architects and other artists. A road crossing the Mall between Washington and Lincoln Memorials, I found out, is named after Henry Bacon, who was the architect of the Lincoln Memorial and was a sculptor also. It is depressing to know where Manila is at now, considering that Daniel H. Burnham is common to both these cities. Also equally depressing is that we tend to forget individuals like Monti, who contributed a lot to our public spaces.

"Thanks for writing about Monti and continuously reminding us of the state of our urban spaces in the Philippines."

Thank you, E.G. Washington is truly magnificent but Manila should have been as majestic if not for the war and the lack of will. Public art and sculpture is making a great comeback in the United States and Europe. Here, although we have had a number of new statues installed, they generally need better settings and larger open spaces (blessed with trees and landscaping) than is usually provided. Many installations have to make do with street islands and leftover space.

Our public sculpture should be conserved. Work by old masters like Tolentino, Monti, Caedo, Mendoza and pre-war artists abound in our cities and towns. Many have been damaged and neglected, or worse, torn down to be replaced by billboards or useless structures.

Our cities could use an Art Commission like those in Washington, D.C. and New York, that review all proposals for public sculpture and make sure that public spaces and civic buildings are blessed, not blighted. Embellishment is part of Pinoy culture. Filipino architects, urban designers and landscape architects should try to rediscover embellishment and articulation in motifs applied even to modern architecture. Enough of this minimalist nonsense! Let our emotions show and share it with everyone. Monti was Italian but we share the Italians’ lust for life and art. To deny this would be to deny our own culture.

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Feedback is welcome. Please e-mail the writer at paulo.alcazaren@gmail.com.

Monumental Monti

 By Paulo Alcazaren
The Philippine STAR 11/05/2005                   

Our modern architectural heritage – our buildings and urbanism of the 20th century – was mainly in-fluenced by American architects, landscape architects and planners. A small number of key colonial personalities shaped architectural production as well as set the stage for Filipino architects to take over. Not everyone who mattered was from the US of A. One key figure carved his place in our artistic history – well known, at least until the 1950s, when building embellishment ruled the day. He was the Italian sculptor Francesco Monti.

Few remember him today, but his work, despite the grime of over half-a-century of neglect, still shines through and delights. I had gone to school (Don Bosco, Mandaluyong) not knowing that the relief of St. John Bosco on our high school facade was Monti’s handiwork. So too with the image of Christ on the edifice where my mother taught medicine – the UERM building on Aurora Boulevard (originally a school for girls). Monti, in fact specialized in architectural reliefs that Filipino sculptors would later on create for ’60s buildings like the QC city hall and the Insular Life building in Makati (relief by Napoleon Abueva, architecture by Cesar Concio).

Monti’s contributions to Philippine art and architecture started much earlier. Francesco Riccardo Monti came to Manila via the Americas to escape fascism in pre-war Italy. Born into an artistic family of funerary and architectural sculptors, the young Monti quickly established himself as a sculptor with great potential (after graduating from the Royal Academy of Breza in Milan) before events took away his chance to move forward so he sailed to the land of promise. On the ship to New York, however, he was redirected to an even more promising land far to the east. Somehow he managed to get a referral for work in Cebu in the Philippines but Manila was his final stop and Monti made the Pearl of the Orient his home for the next three decades.

He justified his move to the tropics in a letter to a friend. (This correspondence is one of the many intriguing artifacts displayed – among numerous elegant photographs of Monti’s work – recently exhibited at the University of Santo Tomas Museum. The excerpt below, along with much of the information in this article, is culled from the research for that exhibit curated by Professor Boots Herrera of the University of the Philippines.

Monti wrote home shortly after arriving in the islands. "Many Europeans believe that the Philippines still needs to be civilized. One must tell these people that there is much to learn from the Philippines, especially in terms of honesty and sincerity! The passion the people have for music and the arts is surprising. Here you find that the most modest workers are capable of reading the most complicated construction designs with surprising ease.

"They work with alacrity and buildings are built swiftly and are more beautiful than they are (in Europe). All government buildings are modeled after the architecture of the ancient Greece civilization and are neat, simple and majestic. This further proves that there are sensible minds that plan, manage and build – most leaders here have a passion for the arts. It is the undeniable and sacrosanct truth.

"Manila opened her arms to me and has given me my work and fulfillment."

Monti may as well be talking about another country compared to today’s Philippine reality but that’s another story altogether. Monti quickly impressed local architects like Juan Arellano who took over the work of the early American designers. Monti created the sculptural embellishments for Arellano’s Art Deco Metropolitan Theater. He followed this up with the intriguing relief of muses for the ultra-modern Meralco headquarters on San Marcelino (both structures still stand – just barely). More work followed, mostly embellishment for a flurry of a civic building the government undertook in the hubris of the commonwealth. Sadly this golden age of Philippine architecture was halted by the war.

During the war Monti was, like many expatriates, put in camps. He was released, close to the war’s end, from Fort Bonifacio through the intervention of the Papal Nuncio. After the war Monti, like the rest of the country’s traumatized citizens, slowly picked up the pieces. He turned his creative energies to schools and churches.

In 1947, Monti created the sculptural relief for the PMA building in Baguio. A few years later he completed four huge panels in the lobby of the FEU auditorium (recently awarded a heritage conservation prize by UNESCO). At the turn of the half century Monti started work on 15 large cast concrete statues atop the UST building representing the three virtues and great classical European thinkers, philosophers and writers. He completed this backbreaking work in 1953. In that year, too, he was his busiest, completing a slew of sculptures for the famous (and only modern-era) Philippine International Fair at the Luneta (which I featured two years ago in this column).

In between all of this work Monti found time to teach (Fine Arts at the UST), help establish the Art Association of the Philippines, do commercial designs for architectural pre-cast embellishments (for the House of Pre-Cast) as well as be involved in the Italian community.

In 1954, Monti completed the reliefs for the new Santo Domingo church designed by architect Jose Zaragoza. Many more schools commissioned him, ending in 1958 with a commission for the Don Bosco Technical Institute in Mandaluyong. It was to be his last creation. Monti died from injuries suffered in a car accident on August 11, 1958. He was to have received the Papal Order of St. Gregory for his service to the church. He also was, by then, acknowledged as having contributed as much to the state and its people.

Monti, like many artists, artisans and architects before him – Italian, American and Filipino – has contributed much to our built heritage of the last century. Our lives and identities have been shaped in the structures and settings they created. Today’s creative professionals and artists should be able to access this heritage to ground their own development and continue the much-interrupted evolution of our architecture, art and city-building.

Monti, 70 years ago, said that we were passionate about art and we had leaders who were possessed of sensible minds that plan, manage and build. This access to our built heritage is impossible if we continue to destroy our architectural legacy.

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Feedback is welcome. Please email the writer at paulo.alcazaren@gmail.com.

Northern exposure

ty SensBy Paulo Alcazaren
The Philippine STAR 10/29/2005                   

From Aparri to Jolo, we never really fully appreciate our beautiful Philippines. Despite the damage we know is happening to our once pristine environment, there is still much left, in terms of natural wonders and man-made heritage, that pleases the eye, satisfies our historical and cultural curiosity and fills our appetite for travel.

I’ve not done Jolo, but recently I did reach as far north as I’d ever been. I hopped on a PAL flight a few weeks ago to visit the surprising province of Ilocos Norte. I’m from Cebu, so my sojourns have been centered on the Visayan Islands. This is that part of our archipelago most local and foreign tourists associate with sun, surf and sinugba. There is, however, more of that everywhere in the country. Ilocos Norte proves that attractiveness is not limited to Boracay and bordering islands – there’s as much and more in bagnet country.

First off, there are almost no phone banners and the ugly billboards that blight almost every other destination nationwide. That alone is worth any trip for me. After landing, I took the road from Laoag to almost all the towns in the province – Batac, Paoay, Sarrat, all the way up to Pagudpud. Wonderful scenery was all around, blessed with a dis-abundance of roadside billboards. I could actually see trees and the green countryside, not pictures of half-naked models or hamburgers.

Next, there are numerous and wonderful examples of heritage architecture from the Spanish and American colonial periods. Many are well preserved (save for the awful new roof of the Laoag Cathedral, the beautiful timber trusses were replaced with banal steel which destroys the ambiance not to mention compromises the structure itself). The Paoay Church is a must-see with its massive earthquake buttresses and generous setting, which is now enhanced by a cafe and souvenir complex. The Sarrat Church and its dungeons, the Laoag Provincial Capitol, the leaning bell tower, the Bojeador farola (lighthouse) should be part of any itinerary.

The Laoag Museum is also a delight (curated by architect Rene Luis Mata among others). Visitors will be amazed at the richness of Ilocos culture and the various diverse influences from China, Spain and even the Americas. A visit to any of the town markets yields much in terms of souvenirs and arts and crafts – blankets, longaniza, empanada, tobacco products.

Even more contemporary settings are of touristic interest. I stayed at Fort Ilocandia, which is going through a renaissance of sorts because of the influx of Chinese tourists. They come mostly for the gambling, of course, but nevertheless they also tour the countryside and imbibe more than the drinks at the gambling table. The "Fort" itself has matured nicely. Originally it looked (at least from what I recall of tourist brochures then) chunky and unfriendly. The trees and shrubs have now matured and cover the original structures with a green flower-embellished patina that is quite appealing. Amenities are quite generous, including a 50-meter pool, driving range, dunebuggy rides, shooting range and ski-doos make the Fort a stand alone destination.

Two places of note at the province’s northern border need to be brought to everyone’s attention – the windmills and the beaches of Pagudpud. I requested a special trip up to see the giant windmills. This Danish/Filipino joint venture is amazing. Seventeen wind generators, each 23-storey high, create enough energy to power close to half of the province’s needs. Each three-pronged blade is equivalent to the wingspan of a Boeing 747. Amazing! What’s more amazing is the fact that, of course, it uses up no fossil fuels, is self-regulating and needs only a compliment of five engineers to monitor it. Sensors in the windmills send data digitally to Denmark and Manila. The mills make little sound except for low whooshing sounds only when you get close enough, otherwise they are silent power generators. We should turn to this type of alternative energy source for the rest of the Philippines (along with alcogas, cocodiesel, natural gas and plain old pedal and foot power).

Finally, let’s talk about Pagudpud. Boracay, move over! White sands, coconuts, friendly coves, Hawaiian-quality surf, blight-free surroundings, and ready access from the international airport in Laoag make the place a serious alternative to congested Boracay. There is tremendous potential in developing the whole stretch of coast in Ilocos Norte to cater to the local and foreign tourist market. The port at Currimao also holds great potential and planned inter-provincial highways lead to greater connectivity to attractions nearby like Vigan and the world-famous Banawe rice terraces.

I believe all the north needs is more exposure. Marketing is a key approach and the next strategy is actually to not do too much, especially with heritage and nature. I hope the north keeps as much of its heritage as possible and shores tourism up with more accommodations, an improved transport infrastructure and conservation of intangible cultural heritage. All this will lead to tangible benefits in the local economy while contributing to the national good. See you up north.

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Feedback is welcome. Please e-mail the writer at paulo.alcazaren@gmail.com.

Fascinating Forbes Park

By Paulo Alcazaren
The Philippine STAR 10/15/2005

One of the most fascinating places in this diversely insane metropolis of ours is Forbes Park. "Millionaires Row" it has been called, and for good reason – the cream of the cream of Philippine business live there. Actually, that moniker is decades old, considering that the peso has depreciated to Mickey Mouse value and making the 58-year-old enclave more appropriately "Multi-billionaires Row."

This original template for all of our country’s subdivisions was named after a millionaire himself – William Cameron Forbes, one-time governor general of the Philippines. Forbes was a busy-body, a Yale graduate who wanted to prove his worth to his peers in the high echelons of American business and society. His family was wealthy and he used his connections to find a post as assistant to William Howard Taft, the first governor general in 1905. He went on to take over the post and champion road-building projects and the physical development of Manila and Baguio (he was instrumental in bringing Daniel Burnham over to master plan the two cities).

The residential development was the creation of Don Alfonso Zobel and J R MacMicking. The Ayalas wanted to make use of their huge property at the fringe of pre-war Manila. They sensed a need for housing the rich displaced from war-torn central Manila and for providing an alternative business center for expanding businesses.

The two took lessons from American suburban subdivisions in Greater New York and Chicago and adapted these to Philippine conditions and the real-estate market. It was reported to be an "experiment to prove the point that people wanted the best that they could afford." The year was 1947 and people, even the rich, could really not afford much. So the Ayalas gave incentives and almost rock bottom prices. They convinced a few of the elite to move there, but only after they built houses for themselves.

To entice more residents from the established residential districts like Pasay, Malate, New Manila, and San Juan, the Ayalas also convinced the Manila Polo Club to relocate here. They also donated land to the Franciscans to rebuild their Santuario de San Antonio (complete with Amorsolo paintings inside). These proved successful in drawing residents in and became the formula for many more Ayala developments in the decades to follow. No modern upmarket subdivisions nowadays are developed without the country club, church, and convent school combination of amenities.

The Forbes Park developers also pioneered the building of supermarkets, drugstores, and related amenities within their enclaves. They also started the trend of forming homeowners’ associations to see to the needs of the "villages." The experiment was also to prove that "some regimentation was needed to preserve a high standard of living."

Residents must abide by certain restrictions set by the developers and the association. Fencing and gates had maximum heights and the house could not cover the entire lot to allow for generous landscaping. The designs for their homes must be screened by a building committee and the houses must have a minimum cost, again to ensure the quality of the architecture. These "restrictions" are all now basic for most high-class developments.

The original 93-hectare "park" was carved out of the extensive Ayala estate which was formerly Jesuit land. The original subdivision had 347 houses with each lot occupying from an eighth to a fourth of a hectare each – huge compared to even high-end developments now (upmarket lots are now down to between 400 and 600 square meters in area while mid-market home lots go down to an astonishingly small 80 square meters!)

The streets were named after the several species of trees planted in the new "park." Those magnificent acacias on McKinley Road (named after the American president who gave the orders – supposedly heaven-sent – to conquer the Philippines) are over half a century old now.

One of the things prohibited by the association was (and still is) the keeping of livestock and poultry. Although adopted by numerous subdivisions thereafter, many middle-class enclaves, like the one I grew up in, did not enforce this, making the cock’s early morning crow the curse of the not-so-rich suburbanite.

The first houses in Forbes were built mainly in revivalist styles that were an offshoot of pre-war trends. In the Fifties, however, the California split-level or ranch types came into vogue. There were also a number of Asian-themed demesnes, like the Pablo Antonio-designed house of Hans and Chona Kasten. Other houses of the rich and famous were designed by the top architects of the day – Carlos Arguelles, Juan Nakpil, Gabriel Formoso, Jose Zaragosa, Pablo Antonio Sr. (who also designed the Polo Club with landscape architecture by Louis P. Croft). These were followed a little later by the work of Leandro Locsin, Willy Coscolluela, Roger Villarosa, and many more of the third generation of Filipino architects (more features on Forbes houses in future articles).

Forbes, therefore, is a rich repository of Filipino post-war architectural heritage. Many of these houses are now half-a-century old and should be conserved. The enclave is also a legacy of suburban development and should be studied for its great influence on succeeding residential subdivisions of the ’60s till the present day. All bear semblance or adapt patterns and elements of this "experiment." In fact, there should be a study made on just how Forbes and the subdivisions of the ’50s, like the Philamlife Homes in Quezon City, set patterns for urban, suburban, and exurban sprawl.

There are lessons to be learned, for sure, in establishing communities, containing growth, connecting infrastructure and maintaining quality of life. Not all lessons are positive and, in the context of today’s super-dense cities, the role of low-density suburbs is to be questioned. Some say these are still necessary to mitigate crowding itself. Others champion a more rational approach to urban development that allows high density near the core and lesser density at the fringes (as Forbes Park was at the start).

Whatever it is, Forbes remains a fascinating place – providing the best contrasting images of the rational and unplanned in town planning, the elegant richness versus eclectic kitschness of Filipino residential architecture, and ultimately the disparity between the sheltered rich and the shantied poor in society.

Finally, the most desireable results in all of our housing experiments from now on would be to ensure that everyone finds a roof over their heads, good neighbors near by, and communities that engender civic life and continued prosperity for all.

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Feedback is welcome. Please e-mail the writer at paulo.alcazaren@gmail.com.

A baffled city 2

By Paulo Alcazaren
The Philippine STAR 09/10/2005                   

As our political situation gets more and more baffling, my preoccupation with sun baffles and building louvers is increasing, too. At the least it has diverted my attention to architectural design rather than to the more devious designs of those who aim to squeeze us dry of taxes, patience and sanity.

From last week’s article, I left out a number of outstanding examples of sun-baffled facades in post-war buildings. Many of these still stand – some layered with the grime of pollution and deteriorating from neglect – while others are continually scrubbed and useful. Here are more baffled buildings to add to the many mentioned last week:

1. The Gonzaga Building by National Artist for Architecture Pablo Antonio Sr. is one of the most striking examples of a building with a baffled facade. Built in 1952, the structure was a symbol of recovery from the ravages of the Second World War. It rose at the start of Avenida Rizal, where it still stands today albeit under the shadow of the ‘70s-era LRT1, which makes the concrete baffles on one side of the building redundant. The Gonzaga building still houses shops and offices as efficiently as it did over half a century ago and is getting a new lease on life with the resurrection of Avenida Rizal.

2. The Carmen Apartments on Roxas Boulevard were built by the prolific and colorful Carlos Arguelles (who trained under General George Patton as a young officer). This sexily curved building boasts wide terraces with deep cantilevers that protect the units from the midday sun while providing a great venue to enjoy Manila’s fabled sunset.

3. The US Embassy. The original main building was a nondescript federal-style civic building, which was augmented in the early Sixties by an interesting international-style block. The structure, designed by American A L Aydelott & Associates, is a low one surrounded by an adobe wall meant by the architect to mirror the slanted fortified walls of Intramuros. The main mass is shielded from the sun by a latticework of pre-cast concrete (molds by Starpel steel). It is a wraparound pierced screen made popular by another American architect – Edward Durell Stone. The building still stands; its fortifications hardened to protect it from terrorists.

4. The Amon building on Buendia Avenue (now Sen. Gil Puyat Avenue) in Makati was a horizontal poem clad in aluminum louvers. Designed by Alfredo Luz (of Ramon Magsaysay fame), the structure housed Amon, the foremost name in building materials (whose tagline "Before you even think of buying the first nail …come to Amon" still rings in my head).

5. The Manila Hilton. Designed by Carlos Arguelles (in association with Welton Becket of Jai Alai fame), its large podium was clad with panels of native wood louvers (now replaced with aluminum cladding).

6. La Fuerza Building in Cebu. Baffled buildings were not limited to Manila. The La Fuerza building in Cebu was clad in Eternit sun baffles and showed that Cebu was as progressive as the capital.

7. National Bookstore on Avenida Rizal. This was my favorite destination for art and architecture books in the Seventies and boasted a well-designed baffled front façade.

8. The Ortigas Building on Ortigas Avenue. Another elegant building from the Seventies had cantilevered shades with a band of smoked glass panels to mitigate the sun. The building is an example of a well-maintained structure that looks as good today as it did when it was first built.

9. The Meralco Building on Ortigas Avenue. This is the high-rise masterpiece of Jose Zaragoza and its curved front façade was framed with vertical