Proposed Crossroad 77 Convention Hall/Theater
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HISTORY OF PHIL. ARCHITECTURE Milestones in Philippine Architecture Before we begin to study the architecture of the Philippines, you must first understand the people and the culture from which it arose, and also their historical background. The first inhabitants of the Philippine Islands arrived between 3000 and 2000 B.C. They were of Malay-Polynesian descent called Austronesians. The people lived in groups of 30-100 families in societies known as barangay. Headed by Datu or Raha/Hari or Lakan They were mainly an agricultural and fishing people, others were nomadic. Trade with mainland Asia, especially China, was established by these people In the 14th century, Islam was introduced in Sulu and the 15th C. in Mindanao In 1521, Magellan stumbled upon the islands in his attempt to circumnavigate the world. This was the introduction of the Philippines to the western world. What followed was 300 years of rule by the Spanish and the acceptance of Roman-Catholicism, which led to the building of many great Baroque churches. In 1898, sovereignty was given to the Philippines and rule by the United States began. The Philippines gained independence in 1946. Philippine Architecture: Pre-Spanish Era Our ancestors were called Austronesians - meaning people of the southern Islands . They were the first seafarers in the world. Caves and rock shelters like the Tabon Cave in Palawan served as shelter for early Filipinos. Later on the invention of various tools allowed for the fabrication of tent-like shelters and tree houses. Early pre-Hispanic house were characterized by rectangular structures elevated on stilt foundations and covered by voluminous thatched roofs ornamented with gable finials and its structure can be lifted as a whole and carried to a new site. Examples: Ifugao House Bahay Kubo Maranao’s torogan The Laguna Copperplate Inscription In 1990, Antoon Postma, a Dutch expert in ancient Philippine scripts and Mangyan writing, and a long-time resident of the Philippines, translated the document that came to be known as the Laguna Copperplate Inscription . It became the beginning of Philippine History: Monday, April 21, 900 AD. The emergence of Islam in the 14th C. in Sulu and the 15th C. in Mindanao led to the building of Mosques, the masjid and the Mnggar in Tausug and Yakan or ranggar in Maranao, Maranao Pagoda shaped mosques such as that in Taraka, Lanao del Sur show Javanese and Chinese influence. Philippine Architecture: Spanish Colonial Era In 1544 the Franciscans built the first hospital in the Philippines, Hospital Real. The 1573 royal ordinances of King Philip II, known as Laws of the Indies was prescibed and stated that every town was to have a gridiron design (cuadricula) with a central square (plaza) In 1583 Intramuros was destroyed by fire, requiring all new buildings to be costructed of stone and tile. Jesuit Antonio Sedeno introduced stone and masonry construction. Implementation of the hybrid type of construction called arquitectora meztisa: Wood on upper floor and stone on lower floor House posts or haligue supported the 2nd floor Stone floors at the ground floor acted as a solid curtain concealing the wooden framework within Wooden pegs and dovetail joints connected the wooden structural system together The Bahay na Bato, typically two stories with the ground level made of massive cut stones or brick walls and the upper level built of hardwood, emerged from the 17th to the 19th centuries The last quarter of the 19th C. witnessed the rise of accesoria (apartment dwellings), single or two stories high and having multiple units called viviendas. School buildings surfaced: the colegio or universidad (urban areas) and the escuel primaria (pueblos), a cluster of multi-story buildings in rectangular configuration with acentral courtyard. The leading edge technology available at that time was employed to build ports, roads, bridges, lighthouses, railways, and streetcar systems. Philippine Architecture: American and Japanese Era In 1902, Americans introduced the use of the toilet via pail conservancy system or cubeta in Manila. In 1908 the concept of a well-planned neighborhood called Sanitary Barrio was introduced and led to tsalet, a crossbreed of the tropical features of vernacular buildings with hygienic structural principles and modern materials. In 1912, the Bureau of Health endorsed several variations of tsalet American architects Edgar K. Bourne and William E. Parsons steered Philippine architecture to the proto-modernist route. Their works were characterized by unembellished facades with large windows. Daniel H. Burnham, the father of the City Beautiful movement, was commissioned to design master plans for Manila and Baguio. Burnham endorsed the appointment of Beaux Arts-trained William Parsons as Consulting Architect (1905-1914) whose contribution tolocal architecture includes; The Kahn system of concrete reinforcement and concrete hollow blocks. The use of termite-resistive Philippine hardwood. The concept of mass fabrication of standard building types In 1904 the construction of the Asylum for the insane in San Lazaro instigated the use of concrete as the standard construction material for all government structures. Buildings that defined the pre-war skyline of Manila include the El Hogar Filipino Building. Hongkong Shanghai Bank Building, Filipinas Insurance Company Building, French Renaissance Luneta Hotel and the Mariano Uy Chaco Building Birth of the “1st Generation” Filipino architects who were sponsored by colonial officials to study architecture and Engineering in the US. Together with the maestros de obras like Arcadio Arellano and Tomas Arguelles, they combined Beaux Arts elements - aesthetic proportions, optical corrections- with the influence of modernism and the concepts of utility and honesty of architecture. The “2nd generation” architects, namely Andres de Luna de San Pedro, Fernando Ocampo, Pablo Antonio, and Juan Nakpil, emerged in the late 1920’s & 30’s and introduced Art Deco characterized by exuberant exoticism and ornamentation as evident in the facades of these buildings: Metropolitan Theater, ELPO Building, Mapua House and Bautista-Nakpil Pylon. Philippine Architecture: Post-World War II Era In 1946, the independent Philippines expressed its identity by implementing Modernism through the utilization of reinforced concrete, steel and glass, the predominance of cubic forms, geometric shapes and Cartesian grids, and the absense of applied decoration. In 1947 a corps of architects and engineers were tasked to study the modern US and Latin American capitals and formulate a master plan for Manila Federico Ilustre, consulting architect from the 1950’s to 1970’s, worked on the building at the Elliptical Road in Q.C. The centerpiece is the 65-meter high Art Deco Quezon Memorial Monument, composed of 3 pylons topped by winged figures representing the 3 island groups. The 1950’s and 60’s staple architectural element were the brise-soleil, glass walls, pierced screens, and thin concrete shells. The post-war doctrine was “form follows function” professed by the “3rd generation” architects, namely, Cesar Concio, Angel Nakpil, Alfredo Luz, Otillo Arellano,Felipe Mendoza, Gabriel Formoso and Carlos Arguelles. The 1950’s also witnessed Space Age aesthetics and Soft modernism, which experimented with the sculptural plasticity of poured concrete to come up with soft and sinuous organic forms with the use of thin shell technology. Examples are: Space Age- Victor Tiotuycos’s UP International Center and Jose Zaragoza’s Union Church Soft Modernism: Church of the Holy Sacrifice, and Phil Atomic Research Center In the 1950’s the height of buildings was limited to 30 meters by law. With the amendment of Manila ordinance No. 4131, a high-rise fever redefined Manila’s skyline: Angel Nakpil’s 12-storey Picache Building, considered as the 1st skyscraper in the Phils. Cesar Concio’s Insular Life Building, the 1st office building to surpass the old 30-meter height restriction Philippine Architecture: The New Millenium Exemplified by the garish application paste colors and the mixing and matching of ornaments and styles. Skyscrapers adopted the tripartite division of columnar architecture (Tower-on-the-Podium) the podium, the shaft, and the crown. Rise of master-planned micro-cities like Bay City, Eastwood City, Fort Bonifacio Global City and Rockwell Center. Retail environments SM Mall of Asia, Gateway Mall, Trinoma, and Greenbelt Mall: and gated communities of suburban pretensions. Global architectural firms bestow “designer labels” to Mega-structures like Michael Graves’s - World Trade Exchange I.M. Pei’s – Essensa Towers Arquitectonica’s – Pacific Plaza Tower KPF Associates’ – LKG Tower SOM’s – RCBC Yuchengco Tower Architects were labelled as “late modernist” and later as “neo-modernist” and “super modernist” Inspiration were drawn from aircraft technology, robotics, and cyberspace as demonstrated by the One San Miguel Building, and the PBCom Tower, and the GT International Tower. Materials such as reflective blue glass or aquamarine curtain walls, aluminum cladding, metallic sun-visors, and metal mullions are mainstays of millennium skyscrapers. Presence of architectural deconstruction, which is characterized physically by controlled fragmentation, stimulating predictability, assymetrical geometries, and orchestrated chaos like the works of Alexius Medalla, Eduardo Calma, and Joey Yupangco Advances in CAD and CA manufacturing technologies Implementation