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THE AMERICAN COLONIAL AND CONTEMPORARY TRADITIONS
The American tradition in Philippine architecture covers the period from 1898 to the present, and encompasses all architectural styles, such as the European styles, which came into the Philippines during the American colonial period. This tradition is represented by churches, schoolhouses, hospitals, government office buildings, commercial office buildings, department stores, hotels, movie houses, theaters, clubhouses, supermarkets, sports facilities, bridges, malls, and high-rise buildings. New forms of residential architecture emerged in the tsalet , the two-story house, and the Spanish-style house. The contemporary tradition refers to the architecture created by Filipinos from 1946 to the present, which covers public buildings and private commercial buildings, religious structures, and domestic architecture like the bungalow, the one-and-a-half story house, the split-level house, the middle-class housing and the low-cost housing project units, the townhouse and condominium, and least in size but largest in number, the shanty.
History
The turn of the century brought, in the Philippines, a turn in history. Over three centuries of Spanish rule came to an end, and five decades of American rule began. The independence won by the Philippine Revolution of 1896 was not recognized by Spain, nor by the United States, whose naval and military forces had taken Manila on the pretext of aiding the revolution. In 1898 Spain ceded the Philippines to the United States, and after three years of military rule the Americans established a civil government.
With a new regime came a new culture. The English language was introduced and propagated through the newly established public school system. A new consciousness developed among the native population as American colonial policy focused on education, public health, free enterprise, and preparation for self- government. The landscape was transformed as highways, bridges, ports, markets, schools, hospitals, and government office buildings were rapidly constructed. The monuments of the Spanish era continued to stand proudly, while the future began to rise around them with triumphant vigor.
In the course of the Spanish colonial era, native design and European styles came together in an evolving synthesis that culminated in the stately architecture of churches and aristocratic houses in provincial towns. As Spanish words were absorbed by the native languages, so were baroque, rococo, neoclassic, and gothic revival motifs absorbed by the Filipino’s architectural vocabulary. That language continued to find utterance in upper-class residential architecture in the early decades of the American regime.
The beginning of the new age was especially evident in Manila, where, as John Foreman (1906) reported, “…works of general public utility were undertaken …
the Luneta Esplanade …was reformed, the field of Bagumbayan … was drained; breaches were made in the city wall to facilitate the entry of American vehicles; new thoroughfares were opened; an iron bridge, commenced by the Spaniards, was completed; a new Town Hall, a splendidly equipped Government Laboratory, a Government Civil Hospital, and a Government Printing Office were built; an immense ice factory was erected on the south side of the river to meet the American demand for that luxury…”
The ice factory was the Insular Ice Plant and Cold Storage built circa 1902 by the Philippine Commission. It was a massive brick building with high and narrow blind arches on its facade that recalled the 19th-century neoromanesque style in the United States. The ice plant survived until the 1980s when it was demolished to give way to the elevated track of the light rail transit.
In the early years of the American Regime construction projects were undertaken by the engineers of the US Army. In 1901 Architect Edgar K. Bourne of New York was appointed chief of the Bureau of Architecture and Construction of Public Buildings, which was under the Department of Public Instruction. Holding the rank of Insular Architect, Bourne was in charge of the construction and repair of public buildings belonging to the Insular Government. Bourne served until the latter part of 1905. Other sources state that in 1901, a Filipino, Arcadio Arellano, was appointed architectural consultant by Governor William Howard Taft (Dakudao 19?). Arellano, a locally trained maestro de obras (master builder), had served as an officer in the Engineer Corps of the Revolutionary Army. In later years he would design a number of notable houses and buildings in various revivalist styles, including the neogothic, neorenaissance, and neobaroque.
One of the priorities of the American government was the development of a summer capital in a cool region. Thus in 1904 the American architect and city planner Daniel H. Burnham came to the Philippines upon the invitation of Commissioner William Cameron Forbes primarily to survey Baguio, and, to use Forbes’ own words, “try to lay out a new city and, in addition, to make some plans for the development of Manila.” In the early years of his career Burnham belonged to the Chicago School that pioneered in modern architecture. He was the chief designer of the World’s Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893, and from then on was a zealous advocate of neoclassicism. As a city planner, he promoted the “City Beautiful” movement, and prepared plans for Cleveland, Chicago, San Francisco, Baltimore, and Washington DC.
For Baguio, Burnham proposed a general scheme for the street system, the location of buildings, and recreation areas. Although his plan was followed in principle, it was adapted by later architects who were entrusted with its implementation.
For Manila, Burnham prepared a more comprehensive and detailed proposal that aimedto develop the waterfront, parks, and parkways; the street system; building sites; waterways for transportation; and summer resorts.
and highly practical in its loose and airy arrangement of pavilions. Parsons’ other major works include the Manila Hotel, the Army-Navy Club, the Elks Club, the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) Building, the Normal School and the adjacent dormitory, later called Normal Hall. His works outside Manila include provincial capitols and their plazas, schoolhouses, and markets.
Towards the end of his service in the Philippines, Parsons designed the initial buildings of the University of the Philippines (UP), then on Taft Avenue and Padre Faura. The first building, the University Hall, was in the neoclassic style, surrounded by porticoes with Ionic columns. In this and in works produced after his Philippine assignment, Parsons succumbed to the revivalism of the Ecole de Beaux Arts from which he had been successfully freed in his earlier work. It was ironic that the architect who had introduced a new direction for Filipino architecture would reverse it by implanting the neoclassic style that would be the official architecture of the government for the next quarter of a century.
The first Filipino to receive the academic title of architect during the American regime was Carlos Barretto, who in 1903 was sent as a government pensionado or scholar to the Drexel Institute in Philadelphia. After graduating in 1907 he returned to the Philippines, and from 1908 to 1913 worked in the Division of Building Construction of the Bureau of Public Works.
In 1911 Antonio Toledo, a product of Ohio State University and Cornell University, joined the Bureau of Public Works, and in 1928 became consulting architect of its Architectural Division, a post which he held until his retirement in 1954. Toledo assisted Parsons in the design of several buildings. In the 1920s Toledo designed the College of Medicine Annex and University Library of the UP, the Leyte Capitol, and, in the late 1930s, the City Hall of Manila, the Agriculture and Commerce (now the Tourism) Building and the Finance Building. Toledo’s works were all in the neoclassic vein.
Tomas Mapua graduated from Cornell University in 1911, and worked as draftsman at the Bureau of Public Works from that year until 1915, when he went into private practice. Returning to the Bureau in 1918, he was named supervising architect and served in that position until 1927. Mapua designed the Nurses’ Home of the PGH, one of the finest examples of the neorenaissance style in the country. In 1925 he founded the Mapua Institute of Technology.
An acknowledged master in his time was Juan Arellano, a younger brother of Arcadio. Juan Arellano studied at the Drexel Institute in Philadelphia, and after graduation travelled through several European countries. He returned to the United States for further studies at the University of Pennsylvania and the Beaux Arts School in New York. On returning to the Philippines he worked briefly with his brother Arcadio. One of their joint projects was the Cota de Leche Building on Lepanto (now Loyola Street). One of its prominent features was a neorenaissance arcade consisting of semicircular arches springing from columns, and decorated with
medallions on the spandrels. In 1917 Juan Arellano joined the Bureau of Public Works. As supervising then consulting architect, he became a dominant figure in Philippine architecture.
His first major work was the Legislative Building. Originally intended to house the public library, the building had been designed by Ralph H. Doane, a successor of Parsons at the Bureau of Public Works. Construction began in 1918. When it was decided that the building should be for the legislature, the revision of the plans was entrusted to Juan Arellano. The Legislative Building was completed in 1926 and was described by A.V. H. Hartendorp, editor of the Philippine Education Magazine , as “the most magnificent and impressive structure ever erected in the Philippines... dominantly Roman in architecture, but Greek in its grace, Renaissance in its wealth of ornament, modern in its freedom from academic restraint, and Oriental in its richness and color.”
In 1931 Juan Arellano completed two of his greatest works: the Post Office Building, a masterpiece of neoclassicism, and the Metropolitan Theater, a magnificently successful experiment in the romantic style, which Hartendorp described as “modern expressionistic.”
The Post Office portico, with its 14 massive Ionic columns, is an overpowering presence that both welcomes and astonishes the visitor. Departing from the conventional rectangularity of neoclassic buildings, Juan Arellano flanked the main rectangular mass with semicircular blocks, thereby adding grace to strength.
Exuberance characterizes the exterior of the Metropolitan Theater. Its festive spirit arises from the rich combination of color, sculpture, light from built-in lamps and the large illuminated window over its entrance, the lively play of receding and protruding flat and curved surfaces, and the insistent verticality of pinnacles. Two movements in architectural design are here noted: an obeisance to the West in the art deco ornament, and homage to the tropics in the batik patterns and various fruit and plant forms.
A few years after the completion of the Metropolitan Theater, Juan Arellano designed government buildings for Banaue, Ifugao, and Glan, Cotabato, and adopted regional architectural forms, such as posts with rat guards from Ifugao, protruding beam ends from Cotabato, and steep roofs from both.
As Juan Arellano brought neoclassicism in the Philippines to its summit, so did he masterfully open new avenues for architectural design, particularly romanticism and the recovery of native forms.
From Parsons’ last years at the Bureau of Public Works to the year before World War II, i.e., from 1913 to 1941, government buildings were designed in the neoclassic style. Among the last of these were the Agriculture and Commerce Building, the Finance Building, and the City Hall of Manila.
Philippines during the early American regime, so was the art deco exposition held in Paris in 1925 the source of early art deco architecture in the Philippines.
Art deco was not a major influence on the development of modern architecture in Europe or the United States. It did not advocate any revolutionary concepts of space or structure, or contribute to the emergence of new architectural forms. It was largely a decorative style, limited to surface ornaments that consisted of stylized motifs ranging from the curvilinear to the angular.
Art deco architecture in the Philippines was significant because it marked the rejection of the prevailing neoclassicism. While it rejected such Graeco-Roman staples as columns, capitals, entablatures, arches, and pediments, it did not reject decoration as such but in fact adopted its own ornamental style.
What differentiated modern or art deco architecture from the neoclassic was the simplified structure defined by posts, beams, walls, and windows. The structural scheme of a building was revealed to some extent on the exterior, and was emphasized with the discreet use of ornament. While the neoclassic building was massive, formal, faithful to the canons of traditional design, and endowed with solemn grandeur, the early modern building was visually light, less formal, liberated from academic historicism, and relatively cheerful.
As the neoclassic buildings were symbols of national dignity, the early modern buildings were symbols of economic progress. In style, neoclassic buildings looked back to the past, but the early modern buildings looked to the future. Neoclassic architecture was identified with the government, early modern architecture with private enterprise.
With progress attained through widespread education, expanded public services, improved transportation and communication, increased production and trade, and greater exposure to the West, new buildings had to be designed and constructed to satisfy emerging needs. Commercial buildings, school buildings, hospitals, hotels, apartment buildings, movie houses, and clubhouses required a new approach to design that only modern architecture, with its freedom and freshness, could provide. Experiments with form could be successfully undertaken with the help of reinforced concrete, the wonder material of the time.
Luna de San Pedro, chief architect of fhe City of Manila from 1920 to 1924, designed the Legarda Elementary School on Lealtad Street, in the French renaissance style. Within the 1920s he moved on to modernism and produced the Perez-Samanillo Building and, subsequently, the Crystal Arcade. The Perez-Samanillo is a straightforward, no-nonsense office building, with a somewhat elaborate exterior that reflects its structural frame. Columns, beams, and exterior walls appear to have been kept down to minimum dimensions to maximize the expanse of windows and the natural illumination within.
Before World War II, the Crystal Arcade was celebrated as Manila’s most modern
building. Its ground floor could be considered the forerunner of present-day shopping malls, i.e., a long gallery with mezzanines on both sides and skylights at the front and rear sections. The striking features of the exterior were the continuous bands of glass windows and plain concrete walls that gave the building both purity of line and bold simplicity. In both the Perez-Samanillo Building and the Crystal Arcade, Luna de San Pedro employed art deco forms in various ornaments.
By 1930 Ocampo Sr. had designed a number of buildings that were highly regarded for being modern. The Paterno Building (now a building of the Far Eastern Air Transport Inc or FEATI University), located at the foot of Santa Cruz (now MacArthur) Bridge and completed in 1929, was notable for its unembarrassed simplicity and functional design. The Oriental Club was modern and had a proper touch of oriental character. The seven-story Cu Unjieng Building, that once stood on Escolta and T. Pinpin, was a “skyscraper” so well designed that the structure was its own adornment.
One of Ocampo Sr.’s most impressive works is the Central Seminary Building of the University of Santo Tomas (UST). E-shaped in plan with courtyards between the wings, the building has a long front with continuous balconies and large windows on the second and third floors. The horizontal movement of the balconies is broken by exposed columns, and more decisively, by the slightly projected central section over the entrance and two similarly projected end sections. Art deco ornaments accent the vertical thrust of these sections and dramatize the entrance.
In 1925, after his studies in the United States, Nakpil went to Paris for further training and, while there, visited the art deco exposition, where he picked up new ideas on architectural treatment, indirect lighting, and furniture design.
Upon returning to Manila in 1926 he was employed at the Bureau of Public Works, then from 1928 to 1930 worked with Luna de San Pedro. In 1930 he established his own practice. One of his earliest works, the Geronimo de los Reyes Building, replaced by the Soriano Building, at Plaza Cervantes in Manila, was in the art deco style. At about the same time he designed the neobaroque Quiapo Church.
Nakpil’s other works before World War II include the Avenue Theater and Hotel Building and the Capitan Pepe Building on Rizal Avenue, and the Quezon Institute Administration Building and Pavilions on España extension (now E. Rodriguez Avenue). With round columns, rounded corners, plain surfaces, continuous horizontal bands of walls and windows, and the minimum of ornament, these buildings belong to the streamlined style of art deco.
While his predecessors in the local modern movement strove for correctness and elegance, Antonio aimed for boldness and vigor. His first work, the Ideal Theater (now replaced by another building) on Rizal Avenue, Manila, built in 1933, was notable for its strong, rectangular masses and minimum decoration.
1939 New York World’s Fair. A pair of high, white undulating walls stand apart from each other against a higher wall of glass blocks. It is the last striking art deco statement of the decade that preceded the outbreak of World War II.
During the last days of World War II, the American liberation forces shelled and bombed Manila to drive out, if not annihilate, the remaining troops of the Japanese army. In Intramuros all the churches, except San Agustin, and all the houses were gutted and shattered. The stately neoclassic buildings, such as the Legislative Building, the City Hall, the Agriculture and Commerce Building, the Finance Building, and the Post Office Building, became monumental ruins. Soon after the war these government buildings were reconstructed in accordance with their original plans. In response to the needs of burgeoning postwar business, commercial buildings were hastily constructed. These were mostly cheap-looking, sometimes fancifully designed makeshift structures, most of which fortunately have not survived.
The second phase in the development of modern architecture in the Philippines began after the war, during the building boom of the reconstruction years, and during the emergence of a new generation of architects, a number of whom had been trained in the United States. Both Cesar Concio and Carlos Arguelles had earned master’s degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Angel E. Nakpil had a master’s degree from Harvard University, where he had been a disciple of Walter Gropius; and Alfredo Luz held a bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Berkeley. One prestigious architect of this period who had no foreign training was Gabriel Formoso.
The architecture of the 1950s was influenced by the International Style, which was characterized by asymmetric composition, bold rectangular forms, plain wall surfaces, clean lines, and large windows. The style was understood to be based also on the principle that form follows function.
A characteristic feature of many buildings of this time was the brise-soleil, also called sun-break or sunbreaker, a reinforced-concrete screen composed of vertical and horizontal fins which protected windows and interiors from the glare and heat of direct sunlight. The invention of this device is attributed to the French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier (Charles Edouard Jeanneret). Its popularity in the Philippines could have resulted from its successful application in the Ministry of Education and Health Building in Rio de Janeiro, designed by the Brazilian architects Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer with Le Corbusier as consultant, which was completed in 1942.
One of the first local buildings that used the brise-soleil was the Engineering and Architecture Building of the UST, designed by Julio Victor Rocha, then dean of the school of architecture. The entire front of the three-story building has continuous sun-breaks protecting its second- and third-story windows. Since its introduction in the early 1950s the brise-soleil has appeared in many variations. Vertical fins are set close together and the number of horizontal fins are minimized, as in Luz’s World Health Organization Building on Taft Avenue and United Nations (UN) Avenue. In
Luz’s Ermita Center on Roxas Boulevard, horizontal bands replace the horizontal fins as braces and thereby give the building stronger horizontal lines. In Concio’s Insular Life Building on Ayala Avenue and Paseo de Roxas, narrow vertical fins are set close together within well defined squares. In a number of sun-breaks, the horizontal fins are slanted to form giant louvers. For the Capitan Luis Gonzaga Building on Rizal Avenue and Carriedo, Antonio designed double sunshades, i.e., concrete slab overhangs at both ceiling height and windowsill height for each floor, braced by staggered vertical fins of half-story height. The double sunshades are effective protection against both sunlight and rain.
Sun-breaks became necessary because wider and higher glass windows had become thefashion, courtesy of the International Style. On the other hand, they intimated that the Filipino architect was seriously concerned with solving the problem of tropical sunlight. Such concern was not always matched by results since faulty orientation often made the sun-breaks ineffective and nothing more than useless and costly ornaments.
One of the outstanding buildings of the period is the National Press Club (NPC) Building on Magallanes Drive, designed by Nakpil. Since the building is on an east- west axis, it avails of maximum exposure to both north and south. The NPC’s expanse of windows and its neat, straightforward structure give it an engaging transparency and cheerfulness. That transparency becomes daring in the glass- sheathed cylindrical staircase and elevator shaft, the building’s distinctive and once controversial feature.
Likewise significant is Arguelles’ Philamlife Home Office Building on UN Avenue, a long rectangular seven-story block with a one-story section housing a spacious lobby and a 780-seat auditorium. The building is a glass box in the International Style but with tropical adaptations. The gray-tinted, antiglare, heat-absorbing glass curtain wall enveloping the building is shielded from sun and rain by horizontal aluminum sun-baffles.
The pierced screen was the celebrated feature of the US Embassy Building in New Delhi, India, designed by the American architect Edward D. Stone and completed in
- Not long after, the pierced screen was introduced in Manila and adopted as a kind of improvement over the brise-soleil. The device, which covers an entire side or several sides of a building, is a perforated wall which reduces and diffuses the natural light entering the building. Pierced screens were made of perforated concrete or ceramic blocks, precast concrete, or thick aluminum bars. The most notable pierced screen in Manila is that of the US Embassy Building on Roxas Boulevard, designed by the American architect Alfred L. Aydelott and built in 1961.
With the use of reinforced concrete and structural steel, buildings could break out of the post-and-lintel pattern and employ such visually exciting features as cantilevers. Canopies over entrances, wide overhangs, spacious balconies, and stairways project daringly from walls or columns, and appear to float. Cantilevers create a sense of
The circular Chapel (now Church) of the Holy Sacrifice of the UP, designed by Leandro V. Locsin and built in 1955, represents a departure from conventional form but in fact recalls early church architecture. Its dome-shaped roof is a concrete shell 7.5 centimeters thick. In the main building of the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), completed in 1969, Locsin brings his romanticism to full expression, particularly in the massive, cantilevered, visually floating block of the facade and the sculptured space of the main lobby.
Two buildings by Formoso, both in Makati, are distinctively modern yet evocative of past styles. The Pacific Star building, completed in 1990, pays homage to the Roman arch and does so with refinement and grace. The Asian Institute of Management (AIM) building, built in 1970, with stone walls and modern bandeja (traylike) panels, evokes the bahay na bato.
The San Miguel Corporation (SMC) Head Office in Mandaluyong, designed by Jose Mañosa and completed in 1984, shines like a giant prism and recalls the Banaue rice terraces. Francisco Mañosa ’s Tahanang Pilipino at the CCP complex and his tent- shaped Mary Immaculate Parish Church in Las Piñas are statements of the nativism he advocates, i.e., the return to indigenous architectural forms and the use of thatch, bamboo, and wood in contemporary buildings.
Various currents converge and flow together in the romantic phase of modern Filipino architecture: liberation from formalism; rediscovery of the native heritage; a sense of history; a sculptural approach to design; adventurousness and the willingness to experiment; focus on the symbolic and the expressive in architecture; the striving for warmth, vitality and richness, and commitment to the human being as the center of architecture.
Until the 1950s the height of buildings was restricted by law to 30 meters. Research on the ordinance revealed that the original reason for the limit was not earthquakes or the load-bearing strength of the soil, but the height that water could reach under natural pressure. In 1960 Manila’s Building Ordinance No 4131 was amended to permit the construction of buildings up to a height of 45 meters. As of 1992, high- rise buildings in Makati and Mandaluyong have reached close to or beyond 140 meters. The Pacific Plaza Condominium in Makati rises to 43 stories or 130.9 meters above ground level and has a four-and a-half level basement for parking. The Palladium Summit Condominium in Mandaluyong is 138 meters high and has 46 stories. The Rufino Tower, an office building in Makati, is 150 meters high, including radio antenna, and has 42 stories. Fast becoming a forest of skyscrapers is Pasig, which began to develop more rapidly in the mid-1980s.
A new type of building that arose in recent years is the shopping mall. The word “mall” originally meant a plaza or a promenade. It has recently come to mean an open or covered concourse flanked by shops. What was once called a shopping center is now called a shopping mall or a galeria. The concourse, flanked by shops, could be one story in height or could rise to two or more stories, with continuous
balconies serving as access to shops on the upper floors. A skylight above the concourse provides natural illumination during the day. Fountains, plants, and small trees give the mall an outdoor feeling as well as a festive atmosphere.
A mall is a small city in itself, housing shops, restaurants, supermarkets, department stores, movie houses, and recreational facilities. The Shoemart (SM) Megamall on Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA), Mandaluyong, is six stories high, more than 500 meters long, and 330,000 square meters in area. It was designed by Antonio Sindiong, who also did the 43-story Pacific Plaza.
Whatever else may be the motive for the skyscraper and the colossal mall, they are spawned by the drive to surpass and excel, and the desire to achieve a breakthrough. They exemplify architecture as adventure. In this sense they are statements of a romantic vision.
Romanticism appears to have taken an unhealthy turn in the current mania for postmodern ornament. Many a sufficiently well designed building has to be topped off by a postmodern pediment and/or arch which is, even on hasty examination, extraneous, uncalled for, and absurd. It is unfortunate that postmodernism is seen only in terms of one particular decorative device, an overworked cliche at that, and not as a new direction for creativity. Postmodernism, in fact, has a romantic component which accounts for its vitality.
Forms
Residences. Upper-class houses built in the 1900s and 1910s followed the general form of the bahay na bato. The living quarters were on the upper floor. Bedrooms opened to the sala or living room. In some houses part of the sala projected beyond the rest of the facade, creating a sheltered entrance on the ground floor. While the house was covered by a hip roof, the projecting portion of the sala was crowned with a gable which carried the family monogram.
The masonry walls on the ground floor were thinner than those of the bahay na bato and were pierced with rectangular windows. On the upper floor the windows resembled those of a bahay na bato, with sliding shutters and with capiz or glass panels, ventanillas (window shutters) on floor level, and fixed transom windows or fanlights over the window head.
In 1917 Arcadio Arellano designed the Ariston Bautista Lin house in Quiapo around a set of Vienna sezession furniture. Architectural ornaments echoed the elegant art nouveau lines of the chairs and tables, giving the house, which was in the bahay na bato style, a touch of novelty.
One type of house in the 1920s had two stories, a front porch on the lower floor, and living quarters on both floors. Some houses had a front porch on both first and
windows, ventanillas, and calado (fretwork) panels over partitions. The need for more space led to the construction of two-story houses with living room, dining room, and kitchen on the first floor, and bedrooms on the second floor.
The one-and-a-half-story house, which emerged after World War II, had one story on one side and two on the other. The one-story section was the living room and dining room; the second story section had bedrooms on the upper floor. The roof sloped down from the two-story section to the one-story section, giving the latter a high ceiling on its two-story side. Access to the bedrooms was through a balcony from which one could look down to the living room. One-and-a-half story houses did not always have this kind of roof; some types had separate roofs for the two-story and one-story sections.
The middle-class bungalow was far more modest than its upper-class counterpart. Instead of a fully enclosed garage, there was a carport which could function as a covered terrace. Depending on the size and shape of the lot, the house was compact in plan, or somewhat loose and open. The latter form was more conducive to cross ventilation.
Since some of the middle class enjoyed economic mobility, their houses would be remodelled or expanded whenever funds allowed. The facade would be improved and decorated, or a porch or rooms would be added, or in the case of one-story houses, a second floor would be built. The Filipino’s concept of a house is not that of something fixed and immutable, but of something that could be improved, enlarged, or completely altered.
The Philamlife Homes in Quezon City, a 600-unit housing project for middle-income families, was an architectural highlight of the 1950s. The units, designed by Arguelles, were the result of thorough research and scientific study. While the comfort of the occupants was the chief consideration, the architect saw to it that construction would be economical and could be rapidly undertaken. From one basic idea came three typical units, each of which allowed four variants, making a total of 12 different schemes. Although compact in plan, the units enjoyed natural ventilation and had provisions for expansion. Since the inauguration of the project 40 years ago, most of the houses have undergone a metamorphosis.
Low-cost urban housing was provided in the early 20th century by the accesoria (rowhouse) which had a row of contiguous two-story units, each with access to a common alley or the street. The units were rented by the occupants. An accesoria unit was one room wide, its width varying with the liberality of landlords.
A living-dining room and kitchen were on the first floor, the bedrooms on the second floor. The kitchen opened to a small yard. To save on plumbing, the bathroom was located sometimes on the first floor.
In the postwar period the government built several low-cost housing projects, such
as Projects 2, 3, and 4 in Quezon City, in response to the needs of the fast-growing population. The housing units were one-story structures, which were either detached or joined to others in duplexes or rowhouses. With low roofs, floors on ground level, and minimum space, the houses were unappealingly plain. The walls were of concrete hollow blocks and the roofs, of asbestos. Since asbestos did not transmit heat, ceilings were considered unnecessary. It was not well known then that asbestos sheds fibers that cause respiratory ailments.
In the early 1960s another form of mass housing was attempted, namely, the tenement, a multistory, multipleunit building, such as that along the South Superhighway.
The Bagong Lipunan Sites and Services (BLISS) housing projects of the Marcos regime consisted of four-story buildings with two or four units per floor. While better designed than the housing project units and tenement, the BLISS apartments were too costly for the low-salaried worker.
In the 1980s mass housing developers promoted a new scheme that took into account the Filipino’s preference for a dwelling on ground level. A so-called starter house of 20 square meters is built on a 60-square meter lot. The house can be expanded to 40 square meters on ground level, and 20 square meters can be added further by constructing a second floor.
A new method of construction has been applied in a housing project in Vitas, Tondo, comprising 1,664 units distributed among 27 four-story buildings on a 2.5-hectare site. Prefabricated box-shaped concrete units are stacked in such a manner that 29 units and the spaces between them result in a total of 50 dwellings. The system, designed by Cesar Canchela, is called the Canchela Shelter Components and Stacking Process for Multi-Story Buildings.
Ermita, a district favored by the foreign community, became the setting of apartment buildings in the 1920s and 1930s. The more fortunate of these were built along Dewey (now Roxas) Boulevard, or just a block away from it. The multistory buildings, some hitting the maximum of 10 floors, had spacious units and a magnificent view of the city and bay. The Admiral Apartments (now Hotel) on Dewey Boulevard, designed by Ocampo Sr., has touches of revivalist design. The Boulevard Alhambra (now Bel-Air Apartments), also on the Boulevard, designed by Antonio, was one of the stunningly modern buildings of the time. The Peralta Apartments on UN Avenue is unique for its protective overhangs on every floor.
Makati is the birthplace of condominiums. While apartments are rented, condominium units, which could be residential or office space, are bought. Some of the best apartment and condominium buildings stand in a row on Ayala Avenue, like the Urdaneta Apartments designed by Arguelles, the Twin Towers by William Coscolluela, and the Ritz Towers by Sindiong.
in 1918. The Legislative Building in Manila was completed in 1926.
The Executive Office in Malacañang was built in 1921. The Department of Finance and Department of Agriculture and Commerce buildings were completed in 1940. For many years after World War II, the Supreme Court occupied the Villamor Hall on Taft Avenue, which had originally been the School of Fine Arts and the Conservatory of Music of the UP. Since 1991 the Supreme Court has been housed in the former Rizal Hall of the UP on Padre Faura Street. The Post Office Building, the most monumental of government office buildings, was completed in 1931. The City Hall of Manila, completed in 1940, was large enough then to accommodate not only the city departments, but also some national government offices.
Symmetrical in plan, formal in massing, with rooms along corridors or around courtyards, pre-World War II government office buildings were in the neoclassic style, following the trend set by Parsons in 1913 in the University Hall of the UP. American and Filipino architects who succeeded him in his post as consulting architect of the Bureau of Public Works maintained it as the official style. Its last burst of glory is visible in the Agriculture (now Tourism) and Finance Buildings.
The end of World War II marked the liberation of government office buildings from traditionalism. The neoclassic buildings that were destroyed, such as the Legislative Building and the Post Office Building, were repaired or restored following the original plans. New government buildings, however, experimented with modernism. Floor plans broke away from the formalism of historicist design, and such features as plain walls, large windows, and exposed columns and beams were adopted from the International Style. Sunbreaks and concrete screens were employed.
Whereas in the past only the Bureau of Public Works architects designed the government buildings, in the post-World War II period private practitioners were engaged to undertake some major projects. The Social Security System (SSS) Building in Quezon City was designed by Juan Nakpil. The National Library on T.M. Kalaw was the work of a consortium of architects called Hexagon Associates, including Formoso, Angel Nakpil, and Felipe Mendoza. The Central Bank Buildings were designed by Formoso; the Development Bank in Makati and the Philippine National Bank on the Escolta were designed by Arguelles. The Batasang Pambansa Buildings were designed by Mendoza. The Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) Building at the reclamation area was designed by Jorge Ramos.
In the early decades of the 20th century, government office buildings were regarded as, among other things, symbols of authority. In the post-World War II years they aimed to be symbols of progress, of looking forward to the future. Embodying a certain freedom of design, they foreshadowed the increasing freedom and restlessness of a new age.
Schools. Education was one of the priorities of American colonial policy in the Philippines. The public school system was developed, a teacher-training institute
was organized, and the UP was established in the early years of the regime. Private education also flourished as Catholic, Protestant, and nonsectarian institutions were founded. The school buildings of the period include those of the public and private school system from the elementary to university level.
Under Act 1801 of the National Assembly, called the Gabaldon Law after its author Isauro Gabaldon, the amount of one million pesos was allocated to the construction of elementary school buildings in barrios or villages throughout the country. Several types of schoolhouses were designed by Parsons, consulting architect of the Bureau of Public Works. These one-story buildings, which were slightly elevated above the ground, had classrooms on one side of an open gallery. Features derived from indigenous architecture were the hip roof and swing-out window shutters with capiz panes. Many of these buildings still exist and are still called Gabaldon schoolhouses.
Public high-school buildings, usually located in cities and provincial capitals, were much larger but followed the same plan of rooms along an open gallery. The gallery was in the neorenaissance style, with arches springing from columns and medallions on the spandrels or the space between arches.
For the Normal School (now Philippine Normal University), a teacher-training institute, Parsons designed a three-story reinforced-concrete building in a style that was modern but with traditional touches. The tight fabric of the exterior wall is pierced by wide windows, each flanked by narrow windows. The continuous line of the hip roof is broken by curved gables. While solid in appearance, the building is characterized by a tropical airiness.
University Hall, the first building in the Manila campus of the UP, was designed by Parsons in the neoclassic or Greek revival style. This established the pattern for the other university buildings which were the work of his successors at the Bureau of Public Works, among them, Toledo. For the UP School of Fine Arts and Conservatory of Music, Juan Arellano designed the neorenaissance Villamor Hall, notable for the Serlian or Palladian motif of its entrance, i.e., a three-part opening divided by columns with an arch on the wide central section, and niches with busts between the upper-story windows.
School buildings are generally longitudinal in plan and therefore have long impressive facades. Wings may extend from the ends and sometimes the center of the main block to form an E or a shallow U or H plan. Some buildings could be quadrangular, with a courtyard within or with two courtyards separated by a central block.
Luna de San Pedro designed the Legarda Elementary School, completed in 1922, in the French renaissance style, with a Mansard roof and dormer windows. The building may be described as a French chateau interpreted in wood and capiz.
Although floor plans followed a standard pattern, decorative styles were varied. De La Salle College (now University) is notable for its neat, precise neoclassicism
