The sweeping driveway and cantilevered block of travertine marble of the CCP, the concrete dome of the Parish of the Holy Sacrifice, the sunburst pavements and multiple sculptures of the old Makati Commercial Center—all of these modernist creations have been ingrained into our memories of the Philippines circa 1950s to the 1980s. And each building and landscape hits every one of us old enough to remember with a wave of nostalgia.
These structures, among many other mid-century modernist marvels designed by National Artists for Architecture Leandro V. Locsin, and Landscape Architecture IP Santos, are featured in an ongoing exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Manilaentitled Leandro V. Locsin and Ildefonso P. Santos Jr.: A Legacy of Filipino Popular Modernism. At the opening last May 23, exhibit curator Architect Gerard Licoposed this question: “After that era, can you see any iconic buildings in the country today?” The resounding answer was: None. “It’s because the works of these two artists were very studied—the architecture, the landscape. Each project was a creation of a national culture.”
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This author was also hard-pressed to think of any Filipino-designed building or landscape from the mid-1980s to the present powerful enough to induce the same nostalgic response—the way a fading photo of say, Nayong Filipino or the Folk Arts Theater would.
The exhibit, which was launched as part of Heritage Month, was organized to encourage the Filipinos to look beyond the Spanish colonial structures like centuries-old churches and consider more recent mid-century modern creations as part of our heritage.
The post-war quest for a national identity
Unlike in Europe, wherein modernist design blossomed after the First World War, the crisp and sleek modernism we know of came much later in the Philippines, springing from the ruins of the Second World War.
Modernism seemed to be the absolute solution, a way to raise the country from the ashes. “In the 1950s and 1960s, Filipino architects were fascinated with modernism as they sought to rebuild a brave new world in the aftermath of World War II and chart the future of a new nation,” Lico explains.
When asked how he picked the works in the exhibit, Lico reveals that he avoided residential projects and only chose works in the public realm. “These are entrenched in the collective imagination of a generation in the 1960s and the ’70s. The aesthetics here are really about how these projects bring a sense of civic consciousness—how these spaces create an identity for a Filipino, especially after the war,” he says. “In a way, their projects helped define that, and made this ‘imagination’ of a nation more tangible and palpable.”
In the exhibit, visitors are treated to displays of Locsin’s and Santos’s original floor plans, elevations, schematic drawings, and photographs, many of which have never been seen by the public. There is Santos’s site development plan of the Nayong Pilipino, with its detailed recreations of the Mayon Volcano and Bohol’s Chocolate Hills as family tourist attractions. The elevations from the 1950s of the Parish of the Holy Sacrifice in UP Diliman, Locsin’s first important public design, are especially poignant. The somewhat shaky, hand-drawn lettering of its title block and faded drafting lines on yellowing paper belie the bravado of the design of that famous, thin-shelled concrete dome church—a ground-breaking masterpiece of an architect who was just 27 years old when it was completed.
Marcos regime comes into play
The works by Locsin and Santos that highlighted their careers were built during the Marcos regime, from the 1960s to the 1970s. The culmination of this was a collaboration between the architect and landscape architect in the creation of the Cultural Center of the Philippines Complex with its CCP Theater of Performing Arts, Philippine International Convention Center (PICC), and the Folk Arts Theater. The erecting of stately and imposing institutional buildings as a form of socio-political control by the Marcoses was explored more deeply in Edifice Complex, a book written by Lico in 2003.
“It cannot be denied that the two architects are linked to the ‘Bagong Lipunan,’” admits Lico, referring to the Marcos era’s notoriously authoritative, right-wing movement. “During the Marcos regime, architecture was more of a propaganda, and it was during this period that the state really poured resources into the construction of a singular national identity: ‘Isang bansa, isang diwa,’from the famous slogan. That regime was very consistent in the creation of a singular style.”
Not just brutalism and modernism, but also Filipino design
The term “Brutalist” is often used loosely when referring to Locsin’s works. But Lico stresses that this architect’s designs were not always exclusively definitive of Brutalism—the design movement noted for its imposing masses and raw concrete surfaces. He also included a lot of vernacular touches that imbued each building with a unique Filipino spirit. “Locsin’s works were more than just Brutalist. For example, with the CCP Theater, the finishes are a unique combination of aggregate; it is mixed with shell to allude to its location near Manila Bay, and the bahay kubois metaphorically transformed into the floating volumes of the building.”
In the same vein, Santos also incorporated many vernacular plantings and references in his public landscaping designs, parks, and playgrounds. Instead of using exotic ornamental plants, Santos often chose unpopular indigenous species such as the makahiya, a local weed with leaves that folded and closed when touched.
A question of conservation
Although many of the buildings of Locsin in the exhibit are still standing, the landscape designs of Santos have mostly disappeared—the old Makati Commercial Center torn down to make way for new shopping malls, the famous Manila Peninsula waterfalls transformed into neoclassical fountains, the CCP Complex now mostly barren. “Because of the materiality of landscape architecture, the plants grow, spread out, and die, so that many of his works are gone. There’s a certain level ephemerality in landscape architecture, and so it needs to be maintained but it wasn’t.”
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Viewing the exhibit leaves one with a yearning for the landscape of the past, and longing for an era that was equal parts comforting and disturbing, nostalgic yet deeply troubled. And it makes one wonder if we still have the same civic consciousness from decades ago—or is this consciousness ephemeral too, much like a dying shrub or the footprint of a demolished structure.
Leandro V. Locsin and Ildefonso P. Santos Jr: A Legacy of Filipino Popular Modernism will run until July 2019 at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila, BSP Complex, Roxas Blvd., Malate, Manila. Admission is free every Tuesday, and there is a free guided tour at 2pm every Saturday
Photographs courtesy of Gerard Lico