• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

Carlos Arguelles, Philam Life Building, Manila, Philippines, 1961. ESSAYS Rising from of the Ashes: Post-war Philippines Architecture BY GERARD LICO The 1945 battle for liberation witnessed the massive decimation of Manila’s urban built-heritage and the irre- placeable treasures of colonial architecture. Despite the seemingly impossible task to resuscitate war-ravaged Manila, it rose again. Out of the ashes, modernism provided the opportunity to craft a new architecture for a newly independent nation. Modernism emerged as the period’s architectural symbol of survival and optimism. In a post-colonial cultural milieu, Filipino architects pursued the iconography of national mythology channeled through the pure surfaces and unadorned geometries of modern architecture. They found in modernism a convenient aesthetic modus to denounce the colonial vestiges embodied in the infrastructure of American neo- classicism in pre-war Manila and sought to create new-built environments that conveyed emancipation from the colonial past and celebrate the vernacular forms processed through modernist geometric simplification. Modernism, therefore, was a logical choice, for it provided a progressive image. The Philippines post-inde- pendence architecture endeavored to dispense an image that stimulated a national spirit, inspired patriotism, and invoked faith in the unknown future of the national imagination. 57 – 2017/2 At the end of the Pacific War in 1945, Manila lay in ruin. The elled the building of a new Capitol Complex. The adaptation city’s built-heritage and once grand edifices of Spanish and of modern architecture as the official architectural style was American colonial architecture were reduced to rubble by not arbitrary but a strategic choice for it possessed a symbol- docomomo indiscriminate bombardment to liberate the city. American ic appeal of technological advancement, economic pros- bombs turned Manila into the second most devastated Allied perity and cultural progress that an emerging nation would city in the world. Yet war-torn Manila rose again. Out of the aspire to. Emblematically, modernism conferred materiality ashes, Filipinos moved on to rebuild their lives and would be to the Filipino national imagination, circulating in the potent gripped by nostalgia for nation, a sense of mourning for the visual politics of nation building. things lost during the war, but they found in modernism the The US War Damage Rehabilitation Fund was also foundation on which to erect a new nation. instrumental in resurrecting Manila’s pre-war neoclassical Essays The widespread dissemination of modernism in the Phil- splendor. The Manila City Hall (1941), Post Office building ippines happened after the Pacific War and coincided with (1931), Agriculture and Finance buildings (1940), Legislative post-war reconstruction and the birth of the Filipino nation. building (1926), and a group of buildings of the University Despite the shaken state of the country in the aftermath of the Philippines (1920-30s) in Manila were rebuilt approxi- of WWII, on July 4, 1946, the Philippine Islands became the mating their original plans. independent Republic of the Philippines. Soon after, the new As the war damage claims reached their respective bene- nation-state found in modern architecture and modernism ficiaries, a construction boom followed suit. The architects, a way to divorce itself from the vestiges of colonization and after a long inactive practice, dusted off their drawing to create new-built environments that conveyed freedom boards and joined the reconstruction euphoria. As they from the colonial past. Modernism was found in audacious built to address the widespread housing shortage and infra- explorations of new architectural forms in the post-war structure deficit, they had to abandon the motifs and orna- creative imagination. Modernism possessed a symbolic allure ment of styles of the pre-war era to reduce the construction of a new architecture for rebuilding a brave new world cost and efficiently complete the structure in the shortest ravaged by war. Modern architecture, in the midst of post- possible time. Post-war austerity meant straightforward and war recuperation and the advent of national independence, no-nonsense architectural forms which modernism readily provided the appropriate architectural image that represent- supplied. “Form follows function” was the new doctrine ed growth, progress, advancement and decolonization. proclaimed by the “third generation” Filipino architects, Though modern architecture had a reputation of being arid, namely, Jose Maria Zaragoza (1912-1994), Cesar Concio machine-like, and impersonal, it was considered by many as (1907-2003), Angel Nakpil (1914-1980), Alfredo Luz (1904- positive, rational and objective, and they championed its 1980), Otillo Arellano (1916-1981), Felipe Mendoza (1917- ability to express a new social order. The modern fervour fu- 2000), Gabriel Formoso (1915-1996) and Carlos Arguelles 47 01 Caesar Concio, University of the Philippines Liberal Arts Building, Quezon City, 02 Federico Ilustre, Model of the proposed National Parliament, Quezon City, Philippines, 1950. Philippines, 1957. (1917-2008). For them, modernism was the most appropriate for the new commonwealth reminiscent of Washington DC architecture for crafting an environment and recuperating in 1939, the government declared, in 1948, Quezon City as lives after the devastation and trauma of war. the Philippine capital and created the Capital City Planning Modern architecture’s simplified geometries were in Commission to prepare its master plan. In 1949, the commis- accordance with demands for honesty expressed in mate- sion, chaired by Juan Arellano (1888-1960), submitted the rials, structure and form; maneuver in restraint rather than master plan which provided a detailed urban framework indulgence, valuing simplicity over complexity. To modern for the creation of the capital city. Using the urban scheme architects, buildings should be shaped purely by light, struc- of Washington, the plan endorsed a government center sit- ture, and massing and not be disguised or concealed behind uated on a high plateau, called Constitution Hill, composed 57 – 2017/2 ornamentation. The utilization of reinforced concrete, steel, of imposing edifices: the House of Congress composed of and glass, the predominance of cubic forms, geometric the Senate Wing and the House of Representative Wing shapes, Cartesian grids, and most of all the absence of all linked by a central tower containing the Memorial and the docomomo forms of applied decoration were the essential features Library of Congress; the Hall of Brotherhood, an assembly of modern architecture. Thebrise-soleil or sun shade, glass hall for important international meetings and conventions; walls, pierced screen and thin concrete shells were staple and the Palace of the Chief Executive. architectural elements of the 1950s and 1960s. The ambitious capital remained on paper until 1955 when The Philippine government’s use of modernism to sustain the government finalized its plan to relocate all its offices its patrimony was pursued immediately after it declared from Manila to Quezon City. In May 1956, the proposed de- its independence. The faith in modernism fuelled the sign and scale model of the Capitol Complex on Constitu- building of a new and modern Capitol Complex. As early tion Hill were presented to the public. These were prepared Essays as 1947, the Philippine government constituted a group of by Federico S. Ilustre (1912–1989), the consulting architect architects and engineers on a mission to study the modern of the Bureau of Public Works. Ilustre’s Brasilia-inspired capitals of the United States and Latin America and on design stirred much controversy. Consciously propelled their return, they were to formulate the master plan for the by concepts of national identity, his design combined modern capital city and the campus of the state university. unrelated shapes and flamboyant forms; used building The mission acquainted the Filipino delegation with South height for excessive monumental effect; and toyed with American modernism, particularly the works of Oscar Philippine stylistic motifs (figure 02). Despite the outrage Niemeyer (1907-2012). The impact of this exposure among and criticism, preliminary construction work commenced the members of the mission was so immense that on their in 1958 but was later abandoned as the funds dwindled in return they would design buildings that closely resembled 1960. What remained of the project was an 11-story struc- the refereed modern structures from South America. For tural steel frame, which was used for the structure of the one, Cesar Concio, a member of the delegation who later Batasang Pambansa [National Parliament] decades later worked as the university architect of the University of the when President Ferdinand Marcos (1917-1989) revived the Philippines, borrowed Oscar Niemeyer’s massing and sun plans for the Parliamentary Complex. shades for his twin Liberal Arts Building (1950) (figure 01) This, however, did not stop government architects from and the Engineering Building and his saddle-shaped Church dreaming; and moving on to design government edifices of the Risen Lord (1954) was imitative of Oscar Niemeyer’s in the mold of some tropicalized South American modern St. Francis Church (1943) in Pampulha, Brazil. architecture production. The Division of Architecture had In fulfilment of Philippine Commonwealth President produced these kinds

Load more

  10

Copy Link